"Masters in Sculpture" and "Lysergic Garden: an Exercise of Reason on the Border of Insanity": One of two current exhibits at Gary Nader Fine Art features works by Fernando Botero, Mark di Suvero, Sandro Chia, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, Rufino Tamayo, and more from the dealer's blue-chip inventory. The first-floor gallery is packed with small- and medium-size sculptures, including scads of Botero's butterball bronzes. In one of Nader's capacious second-floor spaces, Walter Goldfarb's "Lysergic Garden: an Exercise of Reason on the Border of Insanity" makes a head-rattling statement. The Brazilian's solo exhibit flexes muscular, mixed-media canvases that are some of the better works among the gallery's 2000-plus pieces. Goldfarb often spends weeks on a single piece, embroidering the canvas, building his webs of imagery by injecting multiple coats of lacquer onto the surface with a syringe, applying charcoal, and then putting the canvas through several washes of color. In the end, the canvases appear part tattoo, part batik, and part psychedelic network of membranes with lush rainforest hues. — Carlos Suarez De Jesus Through March 31. Gary Nader Fine Art, 62 NE 27th St., Miami. Call 305-576-0256, or visit www.garynader.com.
"Merce Cunningham: Dancing on the Cutting Edge Part I": MoCA's institutional toast to the legendary choreographer's career marks the first U.S. museum show since 1997 to focus on Cunningham's collaborations with visual artists, and features costumes and decor actually used in his company's productions. The exhibit includes works by Sandra Cinto, Olafur Eliasson, Rei Kawakubo, Charles Long, Christian Marclay, Ernesto Neto, and Robert Rauschenberg, among others. It's hard to work up a lather over the Kawakubo costumes Cunningham's troupe wore for Scenario in 1997. Five of the unsightly blue-and-green-stripe and gingham outfits dangle lifelessly from the ceiling on fishing line. Eliasson's Convex/Concave is a large circular foil mirror and hydraulic pump that is among the few works delivering a kaboom in the show. The contraption literally breathes in and out, sounding somewhat like a mechanical Jack Palance. Ernesto Neto's Otheranimal is an intoxicating show stealer. It consists of sheer nylon fabric stretched into a membrane of organic forms, weighted with pellets that droop throughout the space like mutant wattle tree seed pods. The pendulous forms are awash with repeating splashes of blue, pink, red, and violet light, while a discordant jangle of noise and dripping water fills the air. Longtime Cunningham collaborator Rauschenberg gets short shrift from MoCA. Seven of his silk-screened tights are tacked up in the hallway in what seems like an afterthought, and might have been better off left in mothballs. — Carlos Suarez De Jesus Through April 29. Museum of Contemporary Art, 770 NE 125th St., Miami. Call 305-893-6211, or visit www.mocanomi.org.
"Sweet Bird of Youth": This photo-based exhibit, curated by Claire Breukel, features selections from the Debra and Dennis Scholl collection that focus on an evolution of time and place based on the mundane. Breukel has combined imagery of banal, barren landscapes with the loaded rituals of female adolescence to convey a sense of youth trapped in transitional spaces. Artists Breukel has chosen from the collection include Rineke Dijkstra, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Anna Gaskell, and Gordon Matta-Clark. — Carlos Suarez de Jesus Through May 12. World Class Boxing, 170 NW 23rd St., Miami. Call 305-438-9908, or visit www.worldclassboxing.net.
"Sol LeWitt x 2": Sol LeWitt earned himself a place in history books as one of the Johnny Appleseeds of the minimal and conceptual art movements during the Sixties. He's also among the most prolific artists of the mid-Twentieth Century. "Sol LeWitt x 2," a two-part exhibition at the Miami Art Museum (MAM), offers fertile ground to explore both the artist's influential work and the contemporary art collection he has created over the past 50 years. Featuring 45 works on paper and sculptures, "Sol LeWitt: Structure and Line" provides a broad look at the artist's oeuvre, spanning from his early grid-based modular constructions of the Sixties to his recent series of Scribble drawings making their debut at MAM. — Carlos Suarez De Jesus Through June 3. Miami Art Museum, 101 W. Flagler St., Miami. Call 305-305-375-3000, or visit www.miamiartmuseum.org.
