The Lookout: A Weekly Guide to Shows You Won't Want to Miss

With an ever-growing number of galleries scattered around New York, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. Where to begin? Here at A.i.A., we are always on the hunt for thought-provoking, clever and memorable shows that stand out in a crowded field. Below is a selection of current shows our team of editors can't stop talking about.

This week we check out at two-decade survey of Gary Simmons's work at Metro Pictures, Barnaby Furnas's whale-themed paintings and drawings at Marianne Boesky and a home-within-a-gallery installation by the artist pair Muntean/Rosenblum at Team.

View Slideshow Peter Campus: Catamaran, 2012, videograph framed on video screen. Courtesy Bryce Wolkowitz.; Barnaby Furnas: The Whalers, 2012, water dispersed pigments, dye and acrylic on linen, 144 by 195 inches. Courtesy Marianne Boesky.;

Gary Simmons at Metro Pictures, through Jan. 19
This capsule survey reflects Gary Simmons's broad range of themes over the past 20 years, from the African-American struggle to the pitfalls of celebrity. It also samples the New York artist's deft use of unlikely materials and techniques in sculptures, installations and his well-known smudged-chalk blackboard pictures. The exhibition will leave many viewers yearning for a full-on museum retrospective. 

Peter Campus at Bryce Wolkowitz, through Dec. 22
Video art pioneer Peter Campus's show "now and then" includes two works from the '70s-Anamnesis and cir-that incorporate a closed-circuit camera, a monitor and mirrors to complicate how the viewers see themselves in real time. Newer HD videos (which Campus refers to as "videographs") of the Long Island shore look like drawing-watercolor combos in motion.

Barnaby Furnas at Marianne Boesky, through Dec. 21
Barnaby Furnas's latest paintings would be perfect illustrations for a gory mash up of Moby-Dick and the Book of Jonah. The canvases, done in washy layers of water-based paint, document variously violent scenes, some of them biblical. One wood-paneled wall features a series of lovely and somewhat more tame (due to the lack of mayhem) graphite drawings on the same subjects.

Muntean/Rosenblum at Team, through Dec. 21
For "The Nemesims," Muntean/Rosenblum have created an elaborate and rather eerie installation that evokes a home depicted in the computer game The Sims. To create a total environment, the Vienna-based artist team plays architect and curator here with a mini museum show hung inside a compact, drab living space, with many open sides, surrounded by a picket fence. Carefully arranged throughout the bedroom, bathroom and living room areas is an impressive collection of original artworks by, among others, Lawrence Weiner, John McCracken, Gilbert & George, Raymond Pettibon and Stanley Whitney along with, of course, collages and figurative paintings-with-captions by Muntean/Rosenblum.  

Joshua Neustein at Untitled, through Dec. 16
Joshua Neustein's latest show, authoritatively titled "Boss," offers new takes on the artist's long-standing interest in deconstruction and restructuring. Plastic tarps, initially used by Neustein to catch spilled paint in his studio, appear in several works-as a backdrop in Femme Enfant (over which a bare cut-out canvas is hung), for example, or as the main component in Big Little Doll House.

"The Lookout" is compiled by A.i.A. associate editor Leigh Anne Miller.