St. Louis Art Capsules

Miao Xiaochun: The Last Judgment in Cyberspace What do the subjects in a painting see? That question lies at the heart of the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art's first exhibition of 2008. Working from Michelangelo's Last Judgment, Chinese digital artist Miao Xiaochun has re-imagined the towering fresco in which Christ separates the blessed from the damned, from the internal perspectives of some of the fresco's subjects. This allows the viewer to, say, view the scene from the angst-ridden point of view of a cowering man awaiting judgment. Moreover, whereas the original work features muscular male and female figures, Miao's work, rendered in black-and-white digital photographs, features the same computer-generated nude in each role: Miao himself. The exhibition includes a short animation, allowing viewers to explore the entire three-dimensional work. The effect is as mesmerizing as it is vertiginous. Through May 11 at the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, 3700 West Pine Boulevard (on the Saint Louis University campus); 314-977-7170 or http://mocra.slu.edu. Hours: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Sun.

Quilts in a Material World: Selections from the Winterthur Collection Bedding, you say. Yes, bedding. But these quilts, dating from the 1700s to 1850 and on loan from Delaware's Winterthur Museum & Country Estate, are historical artifacts. Not only are they examples of the materials and technologies that were available to their makers, they also bear witness to the evolving cultural lives of women. One, for instance, represents "The Deserted Village," a poem by Oliver Goldsmith celebrating rural life. Others were status symbols whose imagery reflected their makers' worldliness or whose content more blatantly referenced their well-placed acquaintances by simply listing their names. Also showing: A Stitch in Time: Images of Needleworking, 1850-1920, images of women engaged in knitting, sewing, embroidering, etc. Quilts shows through May 26 in the main exhibition gallery, Stitch through June 8 in Gallery 321 of the Saint Louis Art Museum, 1 Fine Arts Drive; 314-721-0072 (www.slam.org). Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sun. (10 a.m.-9 p.m. Fri.).

Things That Matter: Art by Children with Autism The premise: Artistic creation can help children with autism to better express themselves. The disorder, which affects a person's ability to communicate, often includes intense fascinations with things: stoves, Hello Kitty, dinosaurs. Harnessing this fascination, coordinators Bevin Early and Nancy Pierson asked children to make art about their obsessions. So we have a video of a teenager dancing to Willy Wonka's "The Golden Ticket," a collection of found objects from a boy who collects everything he can and repeated self-portraits of a young boy. Also showing: the work of Don Koster and Jen Maigret, the 2007-'08 Cynthia Weese Teaching Fellows at Wash. U.'s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Through September 6 (Koster and Maigret) and September 13 (Autism) at the Sheldon Art Galleries, 3648 Washington Boulevard; 314-533-9900 (www.sheldonconcerthall.org). Hours: noon-8 p.m. Tue. and Thu., noon-5 p.m. Wed. and Fri., 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sat.

Urban Fossil: Cast Paper Artifacts by John Tuccillo Tuccillo takes the region's rust belt legacy as his jumping-off point. After taking urethane molds of the manhole covers, metal grates and crumbling concrete around his home in Peoria, Illinois, Tuccillo reconstitutes these urban relics in a thick paper pulp, which he then paints to resemble the original object. In the gallery's rear is Ensemble, a group show featuring ceramics, painting, photography and sculpture by artists Joe Chesla, Rebecca Eilering, Leslie Holt, Ken Konchel, David Lancaster, Metra Mitchell, Jeff Palmer, Stan Trampe, David Wallace, Rebecca Trawick and Lin Xu. Standouts include Mitchell's figurative paintings, which turn the brush on the artist in a series of psychologically revealing self-portraits, and Chesla's prints, which incorporate the process of oxidizing metals. Through May 3 at phd Gallery, 2300 Cherokee Street; 314-664-6644 (www.phdstl.com). Hours: noon-4 p.m. Thu.-Sun.

Works by Ronald Christ and Ken Anderson Duane Reed Gallery presents the works of two Midwestern artists whose styles are quite different. Christ, an art professor at Wichita State University, paints imagined scenes that he insists are "possible but not probable." His gorgeous, calming, dreamlike canvases call to mind the work of Giorgio de Chirico and the early Renaissance painters who, having freshly discovered the technique of perspectival painting, imagined pristine cityscapes of impossible symmetry. Anderson concerns himself with earthier issues in his mixed-media series of low-relief abstract wood assemblages. Drawing heavily on the world of textiles, Anderson, an art professor at UMSL, uses a muted, earth-toned palette as he arranges strips of painted wood into abstract patterns that begin to resemble woven rugs. Through May 3 at Duane Reed Gallery, 7513 Forsyth Boulevard, Clayton; 314-862-2333 (www.duanereedgallery.com). Hours 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., noon-4 p.m. Sat. and by appointment.