An Annual Floor-to-Ceiling Cross Section of Contemporary Art

The walls of Sideshow Gallery in Williamsburg have erupted with its annual salon-style group show, where hundreds of artists are represented in a mosaic of work that leaves only slivers of open white space.

Organized by gallery owner Richard Timperio, Sideshow Nation II: At the Alamo opened last month and ends after this weekend. It’s worth making time for not just in the staggering number of works you can see in the gallery’s two rooms, but also because the exhibition offers a cross section of the local art scene, as if a drill plunged through the major galleries, small studios, and high- and low-profile art spaces, taking paintings, sculptures, prints, photography, and more with it.

It’s a lot to take in, but there are standouts even in the crowd of color. Tom S. Kosmo has an unsettling portrait of a man being controlled by a raging animal that’s lodged in his skull; Katherine Bradford, a small portrait of Superman that blends the figurative with the abstract; Shari Mendelson, a camel built from plastic bottles. There are also enjoyable juxtapositions, such as Cheyenne Rose Timperio’s neon painting of lines alongside Noa Bornstein’s posed praying mantis, and the stacked cubes of Tadashi Hashimoto’s sculpture against the right angles of the two-dimensional works on the wall.

Then there are cats, the Virgin Mary, paintings of the Newtown Creek, all angles of abstraction (even one flat on the ceiling), a Buckminster Fuller–inspired disco ball, paintings where the color is barely there and others where it’s frozen in drips hanging from the canvas. In short, the show is all over the place, but in a way that feels more like a skip through what’s happening in art right now rather than an uncontrolled deluge. Below is a photo-tour glimpse of what’s on display.

Sideshow Nation II: At the Alamo continues at Sideshow Gallery (319 Bedford Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn) through March 3. UPDATE: The exhibition has been extended till March 9.