Death-Stalking, Sleep-Walking, Barbarian Ninja Terminators

Morley‘s project oscillates between the figurative and the abstract, high art and humble craft, the decorative and the conceptual, narrative convention and the pulverization of content, and he carries it off with consistent visual aplomb. Patrick Painter’s east gallery is given over to a vinyl-letter display of the artist‘s anecdotal sources, in a seeming attempt to convey a frisson of postmodern distance. Luckily, the strategy fails to undermine Morley’s uncommon immersion in his undertaking, or to seriously compete with his equating of the mythology of the West -- our last great physical frontier -- with the still unplumbed depths of the artistic imagination.

NOTES: While at the Fowler, be sure to allow time for the copiously rewarding, intelligently thought-out ”Body Politics: The Female Image in Luba Art and the Sculpture of Alison Saar,“ which pairs the Los Angeles artist‘s assemblage-based sculptures of female forms with similarly themed Central African royal emblems. Through May 13.

At 8 p.m. on March 3, artist and former Weekly art writer Marina Rosenfeld inaugurates a month of Saturday-evening performances at Goldman Tevis gallery in Chinatown. Her ”madscene“ consists of a DJ-style mixing of artist-made acetate recordings. The series will continue with performances by Cindy Bernard with Joseph Hammer, Meg Cranston and others.

Also opening Saturday is ”MacGyver,“ a show at Crazy Space, in the 18th St. Arts Complex, predicated on the funniest curatorial premise (courtesy Mary Leigh Cherry, acting for the Phoenix Foundation) I’ve heard in a long time: seven artists given seven hours, various household materials and Swiss Army knives to create artworks in the inimitable style of the 1980s ABC prime-time secret-agent character played by Richard Dean Anderson. Amazing what you can do with duct tape.