Guild Hall’s Two Other Summer Openers

    In addition to the “Artists & Writers: They Played in the Game” exhibition, Guild Hall will open its summer season with two other new shows: works by John Alexander and Joel Perlman.

    Mr. Alexander is known for his Surrealist paintings of natural phenomena and the human form as well as his biting social commentary. In a solo show opening on Saturday he will present recent natural landscapes.

    The 2012 Guild Hall Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award winner in the visual arts, he has lived and worked in Amagansett for more than three decades. Yet, he maintains a Southern drawl he picked up as a child growing up in Texas, where he lived until the 1970s before moving to New York. He received an M.F.A. from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

    A retrospective of his work was mounted by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., in 2007, and he most recently exhibited in Beijing. His work is in the collections of major museums around the world. The show will be on view through July 28.

    Mr. Perlman’s steel sculptures can be seen in the museum’s sculpture garden and in the Wasserstein Family Gallery, also beginning on Saturday. The Water Mill artist’s work is about cutting away and then reconfiguring forms out of steel in reference to the early Constructivists. He also works in bronze, aluminum, and iron. He wants viewers to have an interactive experience with his art by moving around or even touching it.

    Mr. Perlman was born in New York and received a bachelor’s degree in art from Cornell University and a master’s from the University of California at Berkeley. He was represented by André Emmerich for many years and has work in the collections of several major museums. His show remains on view through Oct. 14.