Now Hanging

George Segal’s plaster-cast sculptures of city dwellers in Street Scenes (Madison Museum Of Contemporary Art, through Dec. 28) don’t hang; they hang around—on street corners, in diners, and inside the observer’s mind. For those who’ve ever lived in a big city—or even downtown Madison—the scenes are familiar ones: “The Homeless” captures two down-at-the-heel men, one splayed drunkenly over a sidewalk grate, while “Box: Man in a Bar” shows a lonely figure lingering in the window of a dive. Several pieces capture the adrenaline of late-night encounters with strangers. “The Diner” shows a faceless man and a waitress trying to avoid eye contact but clearly thinking about one another. Meanwhile, a woman shuffles nervously through a maze of dumpsters, garbage bags, and decaying wheatpasted posters, wary of the mugger or rapist who might be lurking on the other side. Black brick walls and other barricades, such as the locked door that frowns upon the ration-seekers in “Depression Bread Line,” play with the power of symbolism while turning the onlooker into a fellow drifter—or worse, the potential mugger of “Dumpster.” It’s all pretty ironic, considering that MMoCA won’t let visitors take a backpack or so much as a pen into the exhibit space.

Milwaukee artists Lane Hall and Lisa Moline and scientist Dr. Rudi Strickler mine stunning film of microscopic freshwater creatures in Underwater Noise Of Rain (Overture Center James Watrous Gallery, through Nov. 19), but some of Strickler's images arrive on not-so-state-of-the-art equipment: small portable TVs. In the centerpiece of their show, a few of these display edited footage from Strickler's close-up studies of zooplankton. Because of the films' scientific origins, the wordless mystery of it all feels almost accidental. In some clips, the creatures scramble and flail, all limbs and prickly protrusions. Others seem to exist on a plane beyond the grasp of science, especially in one sequence that edits them together to look like living, pulsating Rorshach cards.

Looking for something entirely more scattershot? It doesn't take very long to get all over the place, or just confused, at Western By Northwest (Project Lodge, through Oct. 30). The multi-textured show of sculpture and mixed-media work, by six artists affiliated with a Chicago gallery called Western Exhibitions, takes on a conceptual-yet-homegrown feel. Consider two pieces by Aaron Van Dyke: he has smeared toner and hair (presumably human) onto large pieces of paper.

Also part of the show, John Neff's "Pink Painting #1, 1996, Extant Parts With Condition Report" takes the installation of its title and charts its decay over time. It consists mostly of a pink pinstripe painting, a streamer of yellow yarn, a strip of pink fabric, and a bathroom rug, but a diagram next to it shows how the pieces got lost or damaged as the installation moved between storage and various gallery shows. The Project Lodge's Chris Buckingham says "Pink Painting" emphasizes the life of art outside of exhibitions. Indeed, it's interesting way to ask what a work of art can really accomplish if it's neglected so much. Ironically, the installation might be better for the wear: It began life as a conceptual grouping of odd things on a wall, and now it's at least got a story to tell.