Dream Team

The Norton Museum of Art (1451 S. Olive Ave., West Palm Beach) has your fix in four of today’s biggest artists. First is Jose Alvarez, one of Florida’s most innovative minds. With the care of an ikebanist (an artist in Japanese floral arrangement), he positions feathers, minerals, and other materials on canvas to form technicolor dreamscapes — friendly realms down the rabbit hole. Next is Yayoi Kusama, perhaps the world’s most celebrated living female artist. She lives in a mental ward by choice and applies her various media obsessive patterns — in particular, polka dots, which she calls portals to infinity. Fred Tomaselli, an American master, paints on wood panels scenes of burning, ecstatic revelation, those moments when you have ten eyes and a wormhole opening in your mind. And Leo Villareal does light shows that are like hallucinatory neon constellations. Villareal is designing light architecture for a supertall skyscraper under construction in Seoul; the world would be a futurist utopia if we let him turn our cities into his art installations.

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More About

• Yayoi Kusama
• Jose Alvarez
• Fred Tomaselli
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Visual Arts

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Alvarez, Kusama, Tomaselli, and Villareal are titans of contemporary art, and their work is woven together at “Altered States,” which this year could be Florida’s most outstanding exhibition — a beautiful, arresting bender. Admission runs from $5 to $12. The exhibit closes July 17. Call 561-832-5196, or visit norton.org.
Tuesdays-Sundays. Starts: April 6. Continues through July 17, 2011