"PONDering," TattFoo TAN. Photo courtesy of artSPACE@16.

1. Math Counts at the University of Connecticut's Contemporary Art Galleries, Storrs, Ct., through April 14, 2006. Seemingly contradictory fields--math and art--join forces in this surprising premise of a show of equally surprising quality. Frequently representing less a visual elucidation of a mathematic problem than a passion for numbers-- and presented as elegantly and abstractly as a beautifully formed equation-- the exhibit includes such well-known artists as Mel Bochner, On Kawara, Bernar Venet and Kunie Suguira.

2. Negotiating the Irrationalities at artSPACE@16, Malden, Mass., through April 22, 2006 . Small and tightly conceived, this consistently strong exhibit presents a thoughtful look at seven artists' fixation with repetition. From TattFoo Tan's playful coffee filters turned into what looks like a white cabbage patch, to Gregory King's sensitive drawings, Kristin Zottoli's finely crafted panels, Marielle Sinclair's poignant stitching, Karen Meninno's wrapped fabric Bound Sari Woman and Mary O'Malley fanciful abstract works on paper, there's no getting around the show's obsessive streak--nor its smarts. The exhibit's real knock-out, though, is Kevin Lair's painted wooden panels, deftly installed as if custom-made for the site, but in reality able to adapt and respond to any other.

3. Wilfred H. Croteau: Paintings at The Center for Arts in Natick, Mass., through April 28, 2006. Most artists prefer to work on one particular scale. If Wilfred Croteau does, you'd never know it. As his two shows reveal, he seems as at ease with large, gutsy Abstract Expressionist paintings as with small delicate ink drawings. His canvases at the Center for the Arts in Natick display a remarkably assured command of paint, marked by shifting tempos, bold color and finely nuanced surface incident. His works at the Bakery on the Common are more intimate, but equally expressive, acting as seamless counterpoints to Raffael De Gruttola's memorable haikus.

"Realms and Reveries" Kamrooz Aram. View more images from this month's exhibits.

4. Tempo, Tempo! The Bauhaus Photomontages of Marianne Brandt at Harvard University's Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, through May 21, 2006. Initially trained as a painter, Marianne Brandt switched gears upon seeing her first Bauhaus exhibit in the early '20s. Destroying all her canvases, she enrolled in the legendary school; and the rest, as they say, is history. Brandt went on to design iconic Bauhaus classics--elegant teapots, ashtrays, lamps and other decorative items. Less well known and rarely exhibited are her photomontages. These and a number of newly discovered works, uncovered by the show's organizer Elizabeth Otto, sum up the period's infatuation with montage, rich in pictorial incident, clever puns and the age's rapidly changing norms.

5. Secular/Sacred: 11th-16th Century Works from the Boston Public Library and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts at Boston College's McMullen Museum of Art, Chestnut Hill, MA through June 4, 2006. Could you ask for better timing? The works on view may not be Da Vinci's masterpieces; but with all the hoopla surrounding The Da Vinci Code here's a perfect show for understanding sacred and secular symbols and their sometimes intermingling. Using texts, scrolls and decorative objects, this is a rare opportunity to view these works, most of which after this exhibit will be placed in storage during the MFA's expansion.

6. Degas to Picasso: Modern Masters at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass., through July 23, 2006. Surprise! The Museum of Fine Arts does have a strong collection of Modernist works. And it's quite good. Most of the major players and periods are represented, along with a few less obvious choices, such as canvases by Giorgio Morandi, Nicolas de Stael and Ben Nicholson. The only drawback to this huge, sprawling exhibit, which stretches across galleries and hallways, is that the variety of styles, range of media, and large number of works represented is a lot to take in--especially as the museum typically confines its permanent display of such work to the less adventurous Lane Collection.

7. Kamrooz Aram: Realms and Reveries at Mass MoCA, North Adams, Mass., through July 30, 2006. Everyone likes a beautiful painting; but, as he told the writer Rebecca Weber, Kamrooz Aram would like you to see more than beauty in his works. Born in Shiraz, Aram's infatuation with Persian and American cultures comes through in his combinations of layered carpet and video game motifs, which he then attacks with turpentine, letting the colors bleed, run and pool. The resulting battlefields, however, still resonate as eye candy. Perhaps, after more than 50 years of Abstract Expressionist canvases being used as corporate decoration, it's hard to equate any colorful abstraction with aggression, rage or loss.

8. Carsten Hoeller: Amusement Park at Mass MoCA, North Adams, Mass., through October 16, 2006 . A sure-fire way to mess with a person's mind is to slow down, speed up or warp their pace of life. A few years back, Carsten Holler worked such magic, creating a bobsled like shoot to whisk viewers from the Institute of Contemporary Art's third floor to the basement in the wink of an eye. More recently he created an Alice-in-Wonderland room of gigantic, spinning mushrooms, hanging down from a ceiling like some drugged-out hallucination. Here, Mass MoCA's cavernous galleries are filled with a host of carnival rides, eerily unmanned and slowed to a snail's pace. The fun house flavor of his works has been turned down a notch, but the disorienting sense of alienation remains.

MORE ARTS HEADLINES

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		Arts Features Films at the Gate Photos See photos of kung-fu movies and former Boston Chinatown movie theater locations. Guerrilla Art See photos of local artist Matthew Hincman's bench-like sculpture. "O" is for Original Local artist "Danny O" portrays whimsical scenes of summer in Boston. Multimedia Singer at 100 An exclusive online special explores the controversial work and life of Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. Gauguin's Tahiti Paintings Take a multimedia tour of Paul Gauguin's Tahiti paintings, including the famous painting, "Where Are We From." Hawthorne at 200 View a multimedia celebration of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 200th birthday.