The annual summer-art-kick-off in the Hudson Valley is inaugurated by the seasonal exhibition at Jack Shainman’s The School in Kinderhook, and this year “General Conditions” (on view through November 29) is a cornucopia at 130 artworks that reflect the prevailing issues that plague our global society. Let us bravely face the gut-punches that inform this show upfront: injustice, colonization, weaponization, falsification, dislocation, and displacement are a few of loaded concepts behind the curatorial ethos. Alas, this dynamic presentation confirms art’s role as an ever-shifting instrument of sorcery that transforms general horrors into conditions of inspiration.

The “in-your-face-ness” starts upon arrival with Jaclyn Wright’s Desert Simulation (2025) at the entrance of the building. This installation features a series of standing paper targets riddled with gun shots while the floor below is littered with empty bullet casings and a dry mountain range against a blue sky acts as a picture-perfect backdrop. The vision is chilling, and the message is shrill: fire away! Nearby is Rose B. Simpson’s Daughter 4 (2024), a wood sculpture of a stoic African goddess covered in lava beads, a serene bystander just feet away from Wright’s sculptural target practice rampage.

Make your way through this expert show and the dialogue becomes increasingly weighted by way of objects both alluring and peculiar, among them photos by Gordon Parks as poignant reminders about race and community. His Untitled, Alabama (1956) is a potent image of three boys leaning against a fence in a rural yard while two of them (black boys) point guns toward and away from the camera as a third (white boy) smiles goofily. Again, the message is acute: firearms!

Upstairs the atmosphere goes from dreamlike to forthright, and each section invites a distinct headspace. The room containing Charisse Pearlina Weston’s Un- (Anterior Ellipse[s] as Mangled Container; Or Where Edges Meet to Wedge and [Un] Moor (2024) is one such arresting example. Featuring a wall of laminated tempered glass sheets suspended from the ceiling and leaning down at an angle, the intensity of this sculpture is a strange thrill while the caption indicates “air, whiskey, and dust of [a] tomorrow” as part of the materials for this piece.

Another room contains several expressionistic works, including Gehard Demetz’s Honesty in my Veins (2022) featuring a man with an ornate green unicorn (luscious inspiration), and Kenny Rivero’s The Last Torch Flower (2023), a striking image of a black figure in a black dimension (compelling angst). I recap my stream-of-consciousness notes for this painting herein: a surrealist realm, a passageway, lights far off, time travel, an open page, strangeness: what does it all mean? Several works in this show appear like sexy footnotes in a heightened narrative, including Yoan Capote’s Energetic (2010) featuring a shiny empty coke bottle in a glass vitrine, a vision of commercial perfectness. Another room filled with Hayu Kahraman’s mixed media works all feature eyes as part of the composition: shining eyes, longing eyes, and big, beautiful eyes as a sensuous theme.

The twists and turns of “General Conditions” puts us face-to-face with a certain anxiety that won’t quit, and Deborah Willis’ Shotgun House, Green Door, Orangeburg, S.C. (1998) is one such instance. An image of pale green brick building with an open door, there is something so desolate about this photo that I nearly wept at the sight of it (as they say, God Bless America). Other “reality check” moments include three colorful photos by Jackie Nickerson that speak to the omnipresence of plastic in our lives, and a row of exquisite silver gelatin print portraits of prisoners of Louisiana by Deborah Luster, while a series of amusing sculptures by Alina Tenser lift the mood. From cerebral complexities to sexual intensities, several bold works by Shannon Bool will get under your skin. Her piece Women in their Apartment (2019) is a monumental showstopper image of a quasi-surrealist bathroom scene with disembodied female rumps floating amid shifting tiles (some kind of kinky domesticity), as is her 1:1 (2022), a large horizontal image of a pair of intergalactic boots in a rarified luxury environment (some kind of eerie futuristic-ness).

The sub-level is an exciting visual finale that features Revelo (1986), an abstract twisted wall sculpture by Emanoel Araújo, and Strata (2022-24) by Rose B. Simpson, featuring two large-scale tribal figures that command the room as they face each other from afar. Diedrick Brackens’s blood compass (2023) is an oversized cotton and acrylic yarn piece of two black figures looking upward as geese take flight amid a seaside scene, while Jesse Krimes Apokaluptein’s 16389067 (Scaled down version) (2016) painting made of hand-transferred newsprint and prison bedsheets is reminiscent of a hazy Henry Darger world writ large. If I had to identify a coda for this vigorous show, it would be the vase of magnificent fresh flowers tucked into a corner downstairs, indeed a kind of trompe-l’oeil that made me pause (are they real?) and consider the core of “General Conditions” as a query that cannot be answered: What is realness now?