Pan Gongkai is bigger than he seems at the Frye. He’s a legend in China, an ink painter who also creates installations including video (as at the Venice Biennale in 2011)—and he’s a state functionary, heading up Beijing’s biggest art school. (His father, also, was an ink painting legend.) We see Pan in tight focus, in just a handful of mounted ink paintings ranging from window-size to architectural and made just for the Frye. The blooms of ink are unsketched and must be made all at once in a frenzy of focus, which freezes on the paper. (Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave, fryemuseum.org, 11 am–5 pm, free, through Jan 18)

Jen Graves (The Stranger’s former arts critic) mostly writes about things you approach with your eyeballs. But she’s also a history nerd interested in anything that needs more talking about, from male...