Shows at two galleries

Despite the obvious stylistic differences between the exhibitions at the Kezler Gallery in Southampton and Uberhouse in Sag Harbor, there is one profound similarity in that each features works and concepts that are not usually the domain of traditional art galleries.

This might come as something of a surprise at the Kezler Gallery which, to the casual bystander, appears to be offering a relatively straightforward display of prints and artwork that are exemplified by an entertaining use of technique and a truly engaging approach to political satire and social irony.

What creates the measure of astonishment, though, is that the artist in question is the somewhat legendary British graffiti artist Banksy, who has, at least up until this point, rigidly refused ever to be involved in gallery exhibitions of his own work. Creating a persona as a pseudo-anonymous street celebrity who zealously guards his true identity (to the point that his own parents apparently believe him to be a painter and decorator), he usually decries gallery exhibits of his work as having been consigned from others, averring that “I only ever mount shows in warehouses or war zones,” obviously confusing downtown Southampton with Baghdad or the area around the Vered Gallery.

Nevertheless, not only is the Kezler show quite obviously not a haphazard exhibition of previously sold works from random collectors, a number of people at the opening reception claimed to have met the artist in the crowd, thereby evidently putting Banksy’s imprimatur of approval on the entire exhibition.

Originally arising out of the rigid class structure of urban Great Britain in the early 1990s, Banksy is known for creating works that can best be described as manifesting anti-establishmentarian whimsy, in which stencils of pop culture images are juxtaposed with sardonically challenging slogans or captions expressing messages that are anti-authoritarian, anti-war, and anti-capitalist.

Powerfully using humor as a foil for otherwise diametrically opposed images, the works reflect the greatest influence from pop artists of the 1960s, but Banksy’s more overtly political agenda makes them significantly more dynamic and challenging than such antecedents as pieces by Andy Warhol or his cohorts.

In “Love is in the Air,” for example, Banksy uses a graphic image of a street protester, his mouth and nose covered by a kerchief as a defense to tear gas, readying to lob not a Molotov cocktail, but a bouquet of flowers. In another even more arresting image, the artist uses a stencil of a crucified Jesus with holiday shopping bags filled with champagne, a Mickey Mouse silhouette, and candy canes hanging from his lifeless fingers.

While less immediately dynamic and political, other works of interest include those that directly echo Warhol in Banksy’s use of technique and imagery. Works such as “Kate Moss” (re-creating Marilyn Monroe) or the generic cans of soup in “Soup Quad (blue and red) pay direct homage but, at the same time, establish their own sensibilities that allow them to exist independently of past history.

The exhibition of works by the British artist Banksy continues at the Kezler gallery in Southampton through June 16.

Meanwhile, at Uberhouse in Sag Harbor, the degree of surprise at what one views on the walls is a product less of the objects themselves than of the stated purpose of the gallery to be, not an exhibition space per se, but, as curator/proprietor Lanka Dupont put it, a “space for enhancement.”

This is manifested through a continually evolving and somewhat interrelated series of exhibitions that express a distinctively unique and sensually existential philosophy of life, which is now focused around the marketing of a series of specially designed pheromones that are ostensibly and conceptually related to the works on display.

The exhibition is titled “Phoenix” and features a series of large-scale photographs by Geir Magnusson along with elegantly mounted silver tubes of chemicals. These essences, while not necessarily promising to unleash the inner demons of desire, certainly seem to at least hold out the possibility of that end result.

Aside from the olfactory aspects of the space, which seems bathed in an atmosphere of yearning and sensuality, the works themselves offer rather interesting and entertainingly sumptuous scenarios that are driven by aspects of fashion and elements of surrealism.

This somewhat surreal ambiance is even further apparent in the basement of the gallery, which has been altered from its earlier Christmas season incarnation as a kind of rubber and vinyl boutique to what is now a sort of sado-masochistic installation piece. Of particular interest is the full body leather restraint (described as something for the wedding night) as well as a vinyl bustier that, when matched with a simple cotton peasant shirt, managed to scream both virginity and depravity in the same sartorial breath.

The exhibition of the photographs of Geir Magnusson at Uberhouse in Sag Harbor continues into the future, with other developments apparently yet to come.