Capsule reviews of current area art exhibitions.

Ongoing

Exposure Cleveland -- It's hard out there for a photographer. Images are everywhere, and standing out is difficult. This makes the accomplishments of certain artists in this large, diverse exhibit all the more notable. Several of the photogs -- who all belong to a year-old community called Exposure Cleveland, which was formed through the photo-sharing website Flickr -- manage to offer something truly individual. In "Figs," Anthony Previte presents a stunning visual connection between man and nature, in which some tough, banged-up green figs bear striking resemblance to the hands of the worker holding them: cracked, gnarled, and dirty. Poetically, that's all we see and all we need to see. Thaddeus Quentin deserves a prize for most unusual location. In "American Way," he finds an industrial service closet that looks more like a jail cell; the walls on either side of it bear text reading "Truth" and "Justice." The picture delivers satiric commentary on our overflowing prisons, and the message is doubly bitter coming from a guy who shares a name with a notorious lockup. The show's oddest entry is an untitled composition by Michelle Murphy. A sharply dressed woman stands amid neatly sliced chunks of trees in an ugly urban lot bordered by a brick wall. It's a complex image: humorous, because her tool is ludicrously inadequate and she clearly hasn't broken a sweat, but also poignant, because whoever felled the trees removed the desolate spot's last vestige of life. Few pictures are worth that many words. Until August 31 at Kelly-Randall Gallery, 2678 West 14th Street, Cleveland, 216-771-7724. -- Lewis

In the Realm of the Gods --