Brave, colorful new worlds

Darwin might raise his eyebrows in consternation at Brian Burkhardt's version of the theory of evolution. Burkhardt's dark and funny vision of the not-too-distant future includes plants and animals adapting to meet the voracious demands of corporate culture. His hothouse of an exhibition at Judi Rotenberg Gallery features hemispherical terrariums bubbling off the walls, each filled with plant life either disturbingly adapting to survive in increasingly threatened habitats or genetically manipulated for marketing purposes.

Burkhardt has been following this theme for the past few years; in 2005 he had a show, "Office Plants," featuring ferns attached to phone cords and the like. That show was clever. This one, "New Crop," sports more sophisticated craftsmanship and more nuanced ideas. The artist's imagination is as fertile as the loamy soil in which his mutant plants appear to thrive.

He satirizes the rabid branding and marketing of our era with "iMacintosh Bonsai," a tiny tree sprouting white apples, each with a bite already taken from it, to mimic the Macintosh logo. "Maize Adaptus Familia Hybrid, common name: Magic Kingdom Corn" features Mickey-Mouse-shaped popcorn popping amid the withering leaves in a miniature cornfield.

He also critiques what we've done to the environment. In "Succulent Para Aquacactus," species we think of as unrelated, although in some ways visually alike -- a cactus and a starfish --struggle to survive in a constantly changing habitat by mating.

The themes of genetic manipulation and the terrifying encroachment of technology into the natural world are rampant in art lately. But Burkhardt is an exacting technician. The degree of detail -- from the seeds in his cube-shaped "Squareberries" (which appear in two pieces) to the dragonflies hovering around the "Aquacactus" -- makes these small biospheres worlds unto themselves, packed with information, dark humor, and pathos.

All of the animals Rune Olsen sculpts have pale blue glass mannequin eyes. Instead of the black orb gazing alertly out of a deer's face, there are distinctly human eyes, which are the color of his own, the artist says in the Samson Gallery press release accompanying his show there.

They're riveting. Not only are they human; they provide the only color in Olsen's sculptures. He crafts animals, often engaged in confrontation or mating, from newspaper and tape covering a steel armature. His forms are detailed and true-to-life, but his surfaces are scratchpads: He colors the animals with loose graphite gestures.

The result is an odd cocktail of grit and illusion. The relationships he describes are usually savage, sometimes tender, and always unsettling. In "Jealous," two elephants butt heads and entwine trunks; Olsen cuts them brutally off at the neck, revealing their broad spines, and suspends them as trophies, like a chandelier from the ceiling. Yet he undercuts the impact of the scene with his tape-and-graphite surface, as if to remind us that this is not the real thing, just an artist's rendering.

Consequently, the works have the punch of a nightmare that quickly dissolves. With those eyes, he ascribes animal wildness to the human psyche, but his own artistry tames that wildness. He seems to be attempting to strike a tension between the visceral realities of fear and passion and the more existential reality of how those emotions pass, although we try to hold on to them by mounting prizes on our walls. He doesn't quite succeed.

The folks at Rhys Gallery have paired paintings by Torben Giehler, a 1999 graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts who has gone on to some acclaim, with those of Mark Chariker, who graduated from the Museum School last year and hopes to follow Giehler's path. The two have technique in common: Both block off sections of their canvases, then apply pigment, coming up with crisp tiers of visual information.

The spotlight is on Chariker; Giehler's work is offered as a backdrop. That's unfortunate, because Giehler is a sophisticated artist who deserves the attention he has gotten. He paints (and makes silkscreens of) neon-bright matrices that pull you in by the lapels and hurtle you through space; the result is akin to the endless virtual landscape of some computer games.

Chariker's work is both bold and cluttered. He populates his big canvases with images of tumbling circuit boards that inevitably recall falling skyscrapers. His world is a comic-book apocalypse stuffed with origami shapes, ribboning colors , and puffs of smoke. Technically, his works are impressive: He sure knows how to manipulate tape into all kinds of shapes, and his circuit boards are delicately fretted.

But he's not thinking about the bigger picture, about the subtleties of composition and how to build and manipulate a sense of depth. Figures show up in "Weave of the Destroyers," in which a couple of bearded women with closed eyes gesticulate mysteriously, as if giving benedictions. They bracket a zig-zag of circuit boards, fractured, bright-toned strips, and snatches of pattern.

Unlike Giehler, Chariker doesn't appear to know what he's doing with space; there's no breathing room here, just chaos. He's got his technique down; now he needs to work on his vision.

Brian Burkhardt: New Crop
At: Judi Rotenberg Gallery, 130 Newbury St., though June 2. 617-437-1518, judirotenberg.com

Rune Olsen
At: Samson Projects, 450 Harrison Ave., through June 2. 617-357-7177, samsonprojects.com

Mark Chariker and Torben Giehler
At: Rhys Gallery, 401 Harrison Ave., through June 8. 617-357-7497, rhysgallery.com