The artists in Gallery One's current exhibit play with the fantastic qualities of visual art, where reality is understood through metaphor and nothing is as it seems. John and Robin Gumaelius' sculptures assemble a circus of animals and people that are connected as a single body, like deconstructed Muppets riding atop antiquated wheels while marionette strings pull at their limbs. The clay and mixed-media sculptures are at once fantastic and slightly unsettling - the way children's fantasy tends to be - bringing to mind images from Alice in Wonderland or Return to Oz. Alternatively, artist Patrick Adams creates large-scale oil paintings, piling color on top of color with layered precision like a neo-Expressionist Mark Rothko. It's easy to pique images from his abstract landscapes, but they are easily appreciated for their formal elements alone - colors as real as if a hole were cut in the atmosphere and applied onto canvas. - Laura Hutson

Gallery One
Belle Meade/ White Bridge/ West Meade
Belle Meade Galleria, 5133 Harding Rd.