I’m hoping we’re already through the frozen days of deepest winter after last week’s cold snap, because it feels like Nashville’s winter art scene is fully warmed up. Now we’re all just preparing for the great and powerful seasonal rite when a clairvoyant rodent from rural Pennsylvania will cast his shadow-working divinations, peering — Doctor Strange-like — into some future spacetime where/when spring will again kiss our amber waves and warm our purple mountains. God bless the U.S.A. Until then, I’m predicting cozy crawling this Saturday night, featuring some outstanding holdovers from January alongside several debuts. 

East Nashville

Red Arrow will finish out its winter calendar with a pair of two-artist shows, including a possibly super-twisted display by Jeremy Shockley and Brett Douglas Hunter opening in late March. For February, the gallery will host Demetrius Wilson and Dax van Aalten’s Visible Shifts. This is one of those two-person shows that thrives in comparisons, looking for the reflections and disconnections between works by two separate artists, and — hopefully — discovering a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts. Van Aalten’s abstract landscapes are distorted and dreamy — trees emerge from mist, hillsides glisten at first light. His best psychedelic plant forms recall Charles Burchfield, and don’t forget my predictions about American painting returning to an aesthetic that looks like early American modernism. These scenes are packed with recognizable trees, mountains and clouds, but also more abstract spaces where viewers might discern other forms and figures. In contrast, Wilson’s canvases are more abstract overall, but not entirely unrecognizable as landscapes, animal forms and figures in obscure narratives. Wilson is emblematic of contemporary Black formalists whose abstract styles are unburdened by activist slogans and homages to Jean-Michel Basquiat. His work bucks gallery market trends that commodify readily recognizably Black art, while also upsetting cultural expectations about the kind of work Black artists are “supposed to make.” Wilson’s paintings are timely and sharp, full of movement and soft, warm palettes, aggressive marks and bundles of vibrant color. You can see trees here too. Figures and forms appear and dissolve, but they’re there alongside mountain shapes, under cloud blobs at implied horizon lines. Come compare and contrast. Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 1, at Red Arrow, 919 Gallatin Ave. 

Wedgewood-Houston

If you missed Jodi Hays’ Befores and Afters exhibition when it opened last month, be sure to hit this reception on Saturday night. Over the decades that I’ve followed Hays’ practice, it’s evolved from more traditional painting into 2D works boasting multitudes of reused materials, stepping well into collage but stopping short of assemblage on the painting-to-sculpture pipeline. That said, this show actually includes sculptural installations in the center of the gallery where Hays displays an arrangement of plants on stands along with a painting displayed lying flat on the ground (“Self-Portrait at 48”). I love the irreverence of installing a painting on the floor in a gallery full of people. It’s a great lesson in how perspective can change perception — looming over a painting is a totally different experience from mooning at an illuminated work of art hanging on a wall from several feet away. For better or worse, paintings on the floor break that sublime-sacred-space-spell that connects churchgoing and gallerygoing. I’ve only seen crucifixes on floors in horror films. Hays’ pieced-together installation isn’t meant to shock, but it’s literally and figuratively grounding — these are humble works, made with refuse, and they’re perfectly at home on the floor. “Poets, Teachers, Single Mothers” is the show’s signature image. It shouts out its titular vocational categories with colored text scrawled across a fractured, kaleidoscopic surface of colored paper squares and diamonds. As contemporary art trends toward the formal — that is, away from content and messaging — Hays’ title alone might have sufficed here, but spotlighting everyday people jibes with this show’s nothing-fancy vibes. The text is also written in loose script using colors that tend to blend into their backgrounds. It compels viewers to stop and really stare at the work as they try to make out what Hays has written. Rule No. 1: Make ’em look. Reception 4-7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 1, at David Lusk Gallery, 516 Hagan St. Exhibition closes Feb. 8.

Zeitgeist has always represented some of the best artists in the city, but I’d argue it’s the gallery’s commitment to connecting with and nurturing the careers of emerging artists that’s kept it so relevant for so long. Zeitgeist celebrated its 30th birthday in 2024, and its February First Saturday opening features a guest curator and a group show with a great lineup. Rooted Chronicles is the dreamchild of local artist-curator Marteja Bailey. Bailey had work hanging in Zeitgeist’s Rise Above exhibition during December and January, and for February she’s assembled a large cast of Black artists working in various styles and mediums, spotlighting new creators and established artists during Black History Month. The show includes contributions from Alexis Jones, Alice Aida Ayers, Charles Key, Destiney Powell, Durrell Hunter, Elise Kendrick, James Brown, James Matthews, Jernicya Onyekwelu, Lance Scruggs, Lorenzo Swinton, Michael Mucker, Omari Booker, Phish Bone, Samuel Dunson, Saraya Charlton, XPayne and Bailey. Opening reception noon-8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 1, at Zeitgeist, 516 Hagan St.

Lastly, stop by Julia Martin Gallery to see comedian Josh Black’s farewell to Nashville art exhibition, No Love Lost. The local funnyman has announced plans to move to Chicago in 2025, but not before one last hurrah in Wedgewood-Houston. Opening reception 6-9 p.m. at Julia Martin Gallery, 444 Humphreys St.