Memphis-based artist Hamlett Dobbins’s latest collection of acrylic paintings epitomizes one of the greatest challenges posed by visual abstraction: the suggestion of specific artistic intent as expressed only by pure color and form. A lack of figuration can frequently source a dichotomy for viewers, a push and pull between the intellectual curiosity enabled by non-representational elements and the desire to uncloak a particular narrative, sentiment, and/or motivation at the core of a work. Perhaps this is why Dobbins has appropriately called his exhibition of untitled abstract paintings I Will Have to Tell You Everything on view at the David Lusk Gallery through the month of January. “The artist presents to viewers paintings that look to be cognitively taxing yet ultimately gratifying labors of love achieved only after many long, hard hours of focused meditation.”

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Virtuosity in itself is no virtue. If I played Chopin’s Waltz in D-flat major, Op. 64, No. 1 — popularly known as “The Minute Waltz” — in one minute, the result might be a prodigy of dazzling technical agility, but any sense of context, interpretation or nuance would be lost in the blur. (Besides, the piece’s nickname was originally pronounced “mi-NUTE,” as in “small waltz.”) Thankfully, in his mesmerizing exhibition “The Politics of Power,” Tad Lauritzen Wright not only practices virtuosity but also exercises a keen feeling for art history, for the dynamics of erotic and mythic force and for the dire comic possibilities that engage the bleak and brilliant moments when human beings intersect with the gods.

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Trekking through the electronic archives of this newspaper, reading through my reviews for 2016 to find the best exhibitions of the year, produces a high level of anxiety. So much good art! So little space! Whittling down the list, however, is a necessary task, so after much thought and contemplation, I offer the shows that provided me with the most pleasure and the deepest meditation during 2016. I could append a few runners-up that justifiably clamor for attention, but I’ll resist that temptation in favor of a sense of completion and conclusion. The order is reverse chronological.

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I am interested in exploring the power structure of mythology through manipulation of classical allegories. Mythology continues to be relevant in contemporary culture because of its strong use of metaphor.

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Art is a form of communication. The visual language of pictures and symbols spans cultures and breaches the boundaries of speech. Viewers personify it by asking: What does it mean? What is the art  saying? The sculptures in Greely Myatt’s show, “Maybe I Can Paint Over That,” at Sandler Hudson Gallery depict these articulations and audience-art conversations.

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If you see Maysey Craddock’s show “Unfolding Shores” with other people, chances are that you’ll hear a lot of the phrase, “That’s beautiful!” or even, “Wow, how beautiful!” And those viewers would be correct. The work in this exhibition, on display through Dec. 23 at David Lusk Gallery, is of surpassing beauty, to the point of being hypnotic, seductive, ravishing. Let’s not attempt to parse the meaning of beauty or its relationship to the imagination in an unbeautiful age, and let’s not rely on what has become the current cliche: that we require beauty as a salve to our bruised psyches in this dismal, brutal time. Let’s, instead, tell the truth, that beauty exists in and of itself, for its own purpose, that it keeps its own counsel, perhaps consoling, if that’s important to you, but also a little indifferent.

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The two characters in Rob Matthews’ work at David Lusk Gallery (Nashville & Memphis) then had us questioning gender roles and multitasking abilities, and in Julian Lorber’s This Is How We Play Now at Nicole Longnecker Gallery had us dodging steel spikes in the art world dugout.

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Located just next door to NADA, the small—but very strong—fair juxtaposes both new and storied work from young, mid-career, and iconic creatives alike. Case in point: David Lusk Gallery’s booth brings together a surprising, stimulating combination of artists, highlights being a set of 1970s and ’80s still lifes by William Eggleston, new and haunting figurative canvases by Rob Matthews, and recent patchwork wooden panels by Greely Matt. Exciting new finds include Caroline Larsen’s hypertextural compositions depicting cornucopic bunches of fruit at FMLY as well as Gregory Euclide’s detailed dioramas of lush, unattainable Edens at Hashimoto Contemporary.

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The audacity of beauty lies in its ability to take over our lives and stop time. For that moment we are suspended in a state of wonder that goes beyond contemplation to pure consciousness, nerves, feelings and imagination totally open. Viewers may experience those moments frequently in “Over Time,” an exhibition of paintings by Beth Edwards that continues through Dec. 3 at Clough-Hanson Gallery. The show's title is apropos. It's a small retrospective gathering of 17 works, ranging from 1993 to 2015, and it represents the tendency of art to triumph over chronology.

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Have you ever looked at a painting and said: “this looks like a child painted it”? Would you be even more confused to see Paul Klee or Henri Rousseau sign that kind of artwork? The truth is that these artists belong to two actual artistic ideologies, called faux naïf and naïve art respectively, both of which had a sole purpose of depicting childlike simplicity and frankness. The difference, however, between these entities is that, while naïve art usually refers to works made by individuals with no formal training in an art school or academy, faux naif, as you might guess from the French term, was created by trained creatives, who nevertheless wanted to escape the insincere sophistication created within the traditional system of the arts and imitate the unaffected, authentic experience of our world – very much like the one seen in artworks by children or people with mental disorders. As a result, their paintings and drawings are “falsely naïve” and as such are often put in the same category as Primitive and Art brut, while they could all be categorized under the realm of Outsider art.

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