The shows in this week’s gallery picks explore transitions: in their work, in their selves and in the world around them.

*            *            *

1. “Chris Ofili: Night and Day” spans the artist’s influential career, encompassing his paintings, drawings, and sculptures. The artist’s diverse oeuvre has taken imagery and inspiration from such disparate, history-spanning sources as the Bible, hip-hop music, Zimbabwean cave paintings, Blaxploitation films, and the works of William Blake. at New Museum
2. Inspired by the notion that “every place is unfathomable, infinite, [and] impossible to describe, because a place…[is] constantly arising and decaying,” Alluvial Constructs provides a visual exploration of the intrinsic, unavoidable and poetic processes of construction and degradation at Octavia Art Gallery
3. The Bruce High Quality Foundation re-imagined the much-fabled Arnold Böcklin painting Isle of the Dead as a stark reality when two members, one clad in a makeshift shroud and the other at the helm of a dinghy, sailed toward a garbage dump with the skyline of New York City rising in the distance. Here, they exhibit silkscreen versions of Böcklin’s first version of Isle of the Dead paired with silkscreen versions of their encomiastic image at McClain Gallery
4. Somewear is a series of self-portraits, which struggles with the idea of identity. Is it possible to isolate our purest self from everything that surrounds us? at Praxis
5. Kent Williams’ acute sense of human anatomy has consistently been a staple in his work throughout his career, yet as we see with How Human Of You, the natural tendency we have to explore, experiment, and transition has lead Williams to fresh ground at 101/EXHIBIT
6. Using simple forms and creating broad swaths of rich texture, Alexis Portilla has mastered the subtle connection between soft and hard-edged abstraction. His surfaces are especially vibrant with layer upon layer of soft, yet rich color at Birman Wood Fine Art