Imagine a meeting between Hieronymus Bosch and Henri Rousseau, or for that matter Keith Haring and Roger Tory Peterson, and you’ve got an idea of Morgan Bulkeley’s new paintings at Howard Yezerski Gallery. Genital-less, nipple-less, and ear-less, multitudes of cartoon characters populate Bulkeley’s typically 54x60-inch frames, and they’re embattled, either with their own bodies — stabbed in the back or contorted into Gumbyesque shapes — or someone else’s. At the same time, oversized kingfishers, woodpeckers, spoonbills, and flickers, rendered with ornithological exactitude, preen and soar and hunt for food. At the human level, it’s mayhem; at the animal level, it’s business as usual except that the landscape’s unreal. The mood, intensified by the aquamarine hills and detritus-filled blue skies, is uncomfortable, a planet run amok. Bulkeley explores the multiple meanings of illustration: his humanoids illustrate upheaval, his birds illustrate nature, his unicorns and angels illustrate ideas, and his recurrent Campbell’s soup cans illustrate the role of art in the world — occasional, attractive litter. The Yezerski is also showing the colorful, playful, elegant wood constructions of James Tellin, a welcome respite from Bulkeley’s anxious orgy.

The 15 artists at Barbara Krakow Gallery represent another juxtaposition of familiar luminaries (Chuck Close, Kara Walker) with lesser-knowns. Shellburne Thurber takes large (40x50) color photographs of the interiors of abandoned homes. These are not disaster photos — Thurber’s interest lies in the attractiveness and allure of decay. Although the mattress is discolored and exposed and the plaster of the wall behind it peels from its lathing in her 1998 Chesson House: Abandoned Bed with Dark Window, the bed appears almost made up, as if some orderly ghost had arranged the blanket. The effect is tender without being sentimental: the decrepitude is too stark, the details of vanished habitation too clear not to conjure loss and remorse. Noteworthy too are the muscular, abstract sculptures of Terry Albright, the meticulous grid paintings of Bill Thompson, and the energetic, abstract lithographs of Terry Winters.

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