On View This Weekend

At the opening of the group exhibition “Days I Have Held, Days I Have Lost” at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent, Conn., Barnes lamented that her role as director prevented her from gallery-hopping to see all the other openings. In Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, Barnes repined, you could pop into 10 shows in two hours. In the country, everything is a half hour away. She’s not wrong, and seeing everything that’s on view takes some planning. At KBFA, 5 x5 inch canvas by Sally Maca dazzle with nocturnal bursts of fireworks while the large-scale speedo-clad self-portrait by David Konigsberg is John Cheever brought to life in a Bombay Sapphire-colored swimming pool.

For darker waters, head to Carol Corey Fine Art, also in Kent, where Lisa Lebofsky’s oil on aluminum, “On The Horizon,” dips into Melville with foreboding ocean waves that lurch toward the viewer. Rick Shaefer’s liquid black-and-white charcoal work combines a painterly sensibility with a landscape photographer’s eye for contrast and composition.

Finally in Kent, Craven Contemporary celebrates its five-year anniversary highlighting works from powerhouses like Alex Katz and Damien Hirst and emerging talent like Canadian painter Bruno Leydet, who forgoes his usual male nudes against sherbet Italianate wallpaper in favor of a bold outdoor portrait where pistil-shaped sparklers explode over black like Dutch Old Master tulips.

Travel to the David M. Hunt Library’s ArtWall in Falls Village, Conn., and you’ll see work by the husband-and-wife duo Millree Hughes and Sharon, Conn., native Sarah Davis, on view through June 9. Davis’s dreamy landscapes cast an equally fond eye on solitary nature and urban neighborhood streets, while Hughes’s digital landscapes based on the mega-popular online multiplayer video game “World of Warcraft” seem to level criticism at the pixels we have not only turned our attention to, but fully immersed ourselves in.

Dave The Swimmer by David Konigsberg Photo by Alexander Wilburn

Trapani by Bruno Leydet Photo by Alexander Wilburn

Seascape After Squall by Rick Shaefer Photo by Alexander Wilburn

  

Dave The Swimmer by David Konigsberg Photo by Alexander Wilburn