The Art Scene 01.21.16

Two at Halsey Mckay

The Halsey Mckay Gallery in East Hampton is presenting two solo exhibitions, Ashley Carter’s “A Shot in the Arm” and David B. Smith’s “The Seer,” through March 9. 

Ms. Carter works with rebar, steel, silicone, and other industrial materials to investigate architecture and the human body, and their potentially parasitic relationship. Her sculptures “present themselves as aggressive objects in various stages of decay and painful regeneration,” according to the gallery.

Working in opposition to Google’s Deep Dream algorithm, which teaches computers to interpret images, Mr. Smith programmatically deconstructs images, transforming them into soft tapestries of woven cotton and thread that refuse to be deciphered by human or machine.

Christian Little at Nightingale

“Exhibitionists,” a show of recent work by Christian Little, will open at the Sara Nightingale Gallery in Water Mill on Saturday and remain on view through Feb. 20. A reception will happen Jan. 30 from 5 to 7 p.m.

In this series, Mr. Little examines a voyeur culture preoccupied with sex and drama, with acrylic paintings on wood panels that suggest, rather than explicitly represent, erotic tableaus.

Body parts are entwined with abstract patterns and mundane objects — a mop, a pair of binoculars, a Slinky — and rendered in a variety of painting styles that result in suggestive mash-ups of the representational and the abstract.