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''Beyond the Canon: Small Scale American Abstraction, 1945-1965'' has a portentous, this-will-change-everything title. The show itself, at the Robert Miller Gallery in Chelsea through Saturday, is a big grab bag. Capricious, uneven and at times overly homogenous, it mixes together unknown gems, golden oldies and undistinguished work. But while it may ultimately reinforce as much as shake up the canon it takes to task, its relatively unfiltered view of art history is a wonderful thing to sort through. The spacious Miller gallery is lined with a thoughtfully installed parade of more than 90 small paintings, paintings on paper and drawings by nearly 70 artists whose reputations run the gamut from unknown to world famous. Most of the works were made in New York in the late 1940s and '50s. But a handful of them fall outside the show's 1945-to-1965 time slot, confusingly broadening its span to 1930-78. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I think I can confidently say I've now witnessed the most unprepossessing opening to a theater production it is possible to imagine. As the ushers retreated up the aisles at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater on Tuesday night, the audience's attention came to focus on the man who'd been wandering around onstage as we took our seats. What was he up to? He was rubbing the calluses off his feet, carefully collecting the skin shavings on a paper towel. The pedicure as entertainment -- yikes. The image became a metaphor, eventually, for the callused soul of the character onstage. ''Sunken Red,'' which kicked off the theatrical portion of the Next Wave Festival, is an adaptation of an autobiographical novel by the Dutch writer Jeroen Brouwers. He was interned in a prison camp in what is now Indonesia as a child, along with thousands of other Europeans rounded up when the Japanese took control of the area during World War II. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

TAIYO ONORATO/NICO KREBS: 'THE WHOLE SHEBANG' Marcel Broodthaers's ''Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles,'' that textbook example of postmodernism, seems to have inspired this installation by a pair of Swiss artists better known for their photography. But where Mr. Broodthaers created a fictitious museum department from a single, powerful symbol, Mr. Onorato and Mr. Krebs offer a series of oddities and one-liners. Thirty-two crudely fashioned, quasi-representational assemblages are displayed on pedestals throughout the black-walled gallery. Included are a brown paper teepee covered with peace signs, a laptop computer made of Styrofoam and painted silver, an urn oozing a Play-Doh-like substance and a small figure urinating on a cracked mirror. Birds appear to be a theme, perhaps in deference to Mr. Broodthaers: one is roasted on a spit, and another is covered with white droppings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

'DRAWING ON FILM' Direct films, which are made by drawing on or scratching into film stock, are an intriguing subset of art cinema. You might think of them as animation, structuralist film or a variant of cameraless photography. A new exhibition at the Drawing Center, a gallery normally given over to works on paper, suggests that direct films are really drawings that speed by at 24 frames a second. In the oldest film in the exhibition, ''A Colour Box'' (1935) by Len Lye, wavy lines sway to a percussive Cuban soundtrack. Grids and checkerboards expand and contract in ''Early Abstractions No. 3: Interwoven'' (1947-49), by the midcentury mystic and folk archivist Harry Smith. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

LUIS CAMNITZER This pioneering Conceptual artist, who exhibits infrequently in New York City, has something new and something old in this concise solo. The new piece, ''Last Words,'' right, is a series of six large posterlike sheets of paper with a stream of printed text made up of hundreds of short, direct-address sentences: ''Tell Mom I love her. I love you all. Goodbye to my family. Don't forget me. I love all of you.'' And so on. The valedictory words suggest dire situations: I thought of cellphone calls made from the World Trade Center on 9/11. In fact all the phrases are from final statements made by death row prisoners, which Mr. Camnitzer found on the official Web site of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The sentiments subtly change in tone as the series progresses, shifting from loving farewells to giving thanks to helpful friends, including lawyers, to verbal displays of bravura. The final sentences in the piece are: ''I am ready. Tell the guys on Death Row that I'm not wearing a diaper. I can't think of anything else.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Netta Yerushalmy grew up in Israel. Lee Sher and Saar Harari were born there. All three create small, charged spaces on the stage of the Ailey Citigroup Theater in ''Out of Israel,'' part of the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival, first performed there on Thursday night. But they are very different worlds. Ms. Yerushalmy's ''Bilocale -- Come Closer Please,'' performed with Toni Melaas, opens strikingly. Ms. Yerushalmy paints Ms. Melaas's back with red strokes as Ms. Melaas sits on the floor tossing a lipstick case in her hands. Then Ms. Yerushalmy pushes Ms. Melaas down onto a piece of paper to produce stark, calligraphic images, which she then hangs from a rope across the front. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reviews the exhibition "Impressed by Light: British Photographs From Paper Negatives, 1840-1860" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

The article reviews the exhibition "Wallpaper LAB," in Chelsea, New York City, which will run through October 14, 2006.

The article reviews the art exhibition "Early Cups and Related Works on Paper," by Ken Price at the Franklin Parrasch Gallery in New York City through June 10, 2006.

The article reviews the exhibition "Francis Picabia: Works on Paper, 1950-1951" at Manhattan, New York City.

The article reviews an exhibition of artist Tom Wesselmann's works on paper, being organized at the Maxwell Davidson Gallery in New York City, through December 23, 2005.

Reviews the dance "Funny Papers," performed by Orion Duckstein and James Samson in New York City.

Reviews "Painter of Modern Life," an exhibition featuring paintings and works on paper by Guy Pene du Bois, at Graham in Manhattan, New York City through July 9, 2004.

Reviews the exhibition 'A Century on Paper: Prints by Art Students League Artists 1901-2001,' at the UBS Paine-Webber Gallery in New York City until June 21, 2002.

Reviews the art exhibition `Works on Paper' which features the paintings by John Alexander at the Beadleston Gallery in New York City through May 25, 2001.

Reviews two art exhibitions in New York City in 2000. `Bridget Riley: Reconnaissance' at Dia Center for the Arts; `Bridget Riley: Paintings 1982-2000 and Early Works on Paper' at PaceWildenstein.

Reviews the art exhibit `19th- and 20th-Century Works on Paper,' presented at Dickinson Roundell in New York City, New York.

Reviews the art exhibition `Works on Paper,' at Seventh Regiment Armory in New York City, New York through March 5, 2000.

Reviews the December 1998 exhibition `Anselm Kiefer: Works on Paper in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,' at the Museum in New York City.

Reviews the exhibition of ink-on-paper paintings of Wei Dong in New York City, New York.

Reviews the `Works on Paper,' an art exhibition which was held in New York, New York.

Reviews the exhibition `Recent Work: Marble, Bronze, Plaster and Paper,' by Manuel Neri, at the Charles Cowles Gallery in New York City, through January 9, 1999.

Reviews art exhibitions including `Where Land Meets River,' `Pavel Tchelitchew: Landscape of the Body,' and `Acquisitions on Paper: 1988-1998,' which will be presented at museums in the Hudson Valley, New York State during the summer of 1998.

Reviews Keely Garfield's Sinister Slapstick's dance production `Paper Cuts' in New York City.

Reviews the exhibition `Paper + Finland = Art,' at the American Craft Museum, New York from March to May 10, 1998.