Art

Martin Kersels:

Heavyweight Champion

That title may be the perfect tongue-in-cheek label for this retrospective of a 6-foot, 7-inch, 350-pound artist who presents himself as a hilariously creative lummox. A fan of Buster Keaton and a student of Paul McCarthy and Chris Burden, Kersels explores the absurdities and frustrations of human existence in performances, sculptures and photographs. The Los Angeles artist has made large photos of himself stumbling, falling and getting smacked around, literally throwing himself into his work. His mechanized sculptures include a prosthetic leg that kicks a wall in explosions of pent-up tension. The exhibition will survey Kersels' career in 33 works from 1994 to 2007. Among promised highlights are two installations with a domestic edge. "Dionysian Stage" is an enormous willow-branch nest, stuffed with household objects, that spins like a disco ball. In "Rickety," furniture and other objects are compressed under a platform, as if some great force had flattened them.

Santa Monica Museum of Art, Sept. 13-Dec. 13, www.smmoa.org

Giorgio Morandi, 1890-1964

Widely revered as a seeker of truth in quiet paintings of ordinary objects -- and occasionally dismissed as a one-note artist -- Morandi will get a full-dress retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This first complete survey of the Italian artist's work to appear in the U.S. will track his career in 110 paintings, watercolors and etchings. A native of Bologna, Morandi won prizes in prestigious international exhibitions but shunned the press. His reclusive nature and penchant for painting the same subjects over and over have confined him to the margins of Modern art history. The exhibition will champion him as an important precursor to Minimalism who experimented with Cubism and Futurism and made "metaphysical" paintings inspired by the Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico before developing the classical still lifes that epitomize his mature style.

Museum of Modern Art, New York, Sept. 16-Dec. 14, www.moma.org

Martin Kippenberger: Problem Perspective