Realist details bring this show to life

Randall Deihl's realist paintings have the small-town romance of a neon-lit diner on a snowy winter day. Colors pop, people grin, huge inflatable cartoon characters congregate in front yards. What adds gravity to some of Deihl's scenes, on view in a sweetheart of a group show at Clark Gallery, is the artist himself. His visage looks carved out of stone, weathered and dour.

He shows up in the doorway of "Artist at Nick's Nest at Night," a glowing hot-dog joint. Another customer peers out the window, smiling broadly, while Deihl stares down the viewer, as if daring any approach. "Large Studio Self-Portrait" has him in his element, in front of a canvas depicting old cars in a green field. There's a James Brown doll and an Alec Guinness movie poster; the studio is infused with an American pop sensibility of the 1950s and '60s. The artist himself regards us with brilliant blue eyes, deep set in a craggy face, like light pouring out of a tunnel.

Deihl is one of three artists in the exhibition "Rendering Reality." The three seem miles apart in their work, but certain elements tie them in a neat bow. Phillip Gabrielli specializes in still lifes; his palette is moodier than Deihl's, his brushwork more intricate. He's less about story and atmosphere, more about structure and composition. But like Deihl, Gabrielli incorporates paintings in his paintings.

Gabrielli shouts into the echo chamber of art history to see how his voice bounces. His lovely "Still Life With Figs" centers on Vermeer's "A Lady Writing," which itself has still- life elements : A string of pearls and a blue cloth rest on the table where the young woman writes. Gabrielli sets figs on the table with the portrait; light falls on the scene from above.

Fred Lynch shares Deihl's love of diners. He paints comically surreal images of coffee cups. His realism is in the smooth texture of ceramics, or the glint of light on a rim. But these cups melt like the watches in Dali's "The Persistence of Memory." Look at "Coffee Cup #33," a cup on its saucer, slumping with its mouth open so you can see the last swig of coffee sloshing in the bottom. Lynch's cups embody what many coffee drinkers feel like before that first morning infusion.

Cristi Rinklin's show at Rhys Gallery features several delirious yet assured paintings. They conflate baroque sensibilities with comic-book graphics, tackle classic conundrums of painting, then pull in a digital sensibility, just to mix things up. Often, a central muscular gesture erupts . In "Lens," it's a red ruffle. Blue/white clouds stretch around it like bubble gum. The ruffle frames a distant, gothic, luridly red landscape. Rinklin interrupts this dream of depth with several flat red-and-white bull's-eye disks. All this shimmies over a background that looks digitally fuzzed. "Lens" skips over the lines between figure and ground, between abstract and representational, like a jump-rope champ.

Also at Rhys Gallery, sculptor Heidi Hove Pedersen toys with the cult of consumerism. Some works are clever; others don't quite connect. "Match Trucks x 98" does. It features 98 photos of folks and their trucks and as many matchstick models. The tiny models sweetly miniaturize the big trucks, at once echoing the affection the owners feel and shrinking their love objects down to size.

Each year, Bromfield Gallery holds a competition for two solo shows. This year, the juror, DeCordova Museum curator Nick Capasso , awarded exhibitions to Emily Driscoll and Geoff Carter. Both make startling, disturbing works on paper.

Carter draws haunting large-scale images in graphite that manifest a chilling brutality. "I guess we arnt having chicken" looks like a page out of a Faulkner novel: A pregnant woman holds at gunpoint a shirtless man carrying a dead chicken and a cleaver. In the background, the black graphite seems to bleed into the paper, as a dark mountain frames and echoes the shape of the woman. In contrast, the foreground bristles with detail: blades of grass, the woman's matter-of-fact expression, the slender muzzle of the pistol.

Driscoll draws and collages figures on architectural drafting paper; her material references the construction of personae. Many of the figures -- as in "Gang" and "Brigade" -- seem to be donning or removing limbs or extra heads and shoulders, as if they are costumes. Others wear masks, carry instruments with sensors, and pose like fashion models. There's a sense that nothing is authentic here; there is no "real" self, only the social construction of one. It's dark work, expertly made.