ART REVIEW : ‘LANDSCAPE’: OUTDOORS, OUTLANDISH

“Visionary Landscape,” a group exhibition at the Woman’s Building, continues a long tradition of looking outdoors and seeing the outlandish.

Carol Neiman, for example, sets nude women adrift and wild animals to grazing in oppressive urban settings. Lucy Blake-Elahi has sharp boulders sprouting in a swimming pool, while Diane Trenholme conjures a midnight sky filled with writing.

Merion Estes and Margaret Nielsen imagine the worst: apocalyptic fires that roar through forests or consume fountains. Estes’ visions are spilled out on large canvases, while Nielsen’s are meticulously squeezed into tiny ones, but they share a view of nature erupting with a vengeance.

For Barbara Mendes, the earth is a vibrant tropical garden inhabited by powerful female figures who themselves become backdrops for fantastic scenes such as a parade of toy horses and elegant ladies who walk on water. Hers is a fabulist vision rooted in the steamy climate of Latino fantasy, where nature and human life are interwoven in a rich tapestry.

Nancy Jackson, on the other hand, employs an icy blue-gray, Nordic palette in witty paintings of ant-like human beings clinging to a treacherous cliff or huddling by a fire on a precipice. Stiffly painted in flat color and spider-web line, these peculiar artworks exert the charm of naivete while striking a convincing chord of fear that will send acrophobics into fits of terror.

Among other visions, Magdalene Kispal focuses her camera on organic ruptures in the earth and on rounded protrusions that might be global villages. In mixed-media works, Martha Matthews lets loose “Designer Tanks” in a suburban neighborhood and Robin Ghelerter anchors child-like fantasies to the solidity of bright little houses.

As group shows go, “Visionary Landscape” is a garden variety, mixing highly accomplished works with rather amateurish ones and attempting to survey more attitudes than the space accommodates, but the theme rings true. Only the most literal minded have never imagined fairies among the flowers or monsters in the bushes.

The exhibition continues through Wednesday .