Calm Before the Storm

It's official. Art junkies are about to revel in a mainline dose of unrefined adrenaline. The season-opening Second Saturday Art Walk this Saturday promises a steady IV drip of new shows to mush the eyes into creamed corn and leave the noggin spinning. On tap at Praxis International Art, Nina Surel's "Understory" boasts a suite of arresting portrayals of modern women, rendered in primal forest settings. Surel plunges headlong into the ineffable realm of emotion, employing photographs, lace, buttons, porcelain, jewelry, and resin on wood to convey her childhood fantasies, romanticism, and early feminist literature. Call 305-573-2700 or visit praxis-art.com. Stumble past the ubiquitous greasy spoons on wheels peppering the art nabe's main strip and into Butter Gallery (2301 NW Second Ave., Miami), where Yuri Tuma presents "Metropolis," his psychedelic vision of complex landscapes that tweak the ever-shifting boundaries between reality and perception. Celebrating his third stint with Butter in two years, Tuma continues exploring imagery, inviting spectators to stop categorizing his work or trying to identify recognizable objects. For Tuma, photography lives at the moment between the flat and the deep, between the organic and constructed, and between the visual and imagined. In other words, it's all a big mind fuck. Call 305-303-6254 or visit buttergallery.com. A rib-bone's toss across the asphalt, don't miss Pan American Art Projects' (2450 NW Second Ave., Miami) celebration of its tenth anniversary and fifth in Wynwood. The space is featuring the soul-stinging work of Leon Ferrari and a collective of his fellow Argentine contemporaries. Ferrari is a bona fide antiestablishment figure and unrepentant fire spitter known for his sordid vision of Hell, in which he presents Catholic martyrs roasting in a skillet. It's enough to collapse your veins.
Sat., Sept. 10, 6 p.m., 2011