Mandy Greer at SOIL. Sept 2-24.
An installation of mixed-media sculpture that hovers between surreal taxidermy and cute-and-fuzzy stuffed animals. Greer's work is anything but cute, however. It's really more chilling, in spite of--perhaps spurred on by--her penchant for pink.

Fuzzy Engine at the Market Street Studios. Sept. 9.
This one-night-only show, entitled The El Camino Effect, looks into what happens when you try to have the best of both worlds in one object or idea, such as the mullet (long hair and short hair) or bisexuality. Participating artists include Leslie Clague, Walter Wright, Patrick Holderfield, and Susan Robb.

Geoffrey Chadsey at James Harris Gallery. Sept 7-30.
The culture of maleness in drawings--using red and blue pencils exclusively--that pull references and formal techniques from art history and pop culture, from Gustav Klimt to Elvis.

Evan Hecox at Houston. Sept 7-Oct 31.
Work by a San Francisco artist best known for his illustration work for Carhartt clothing and Chocolate skateboards.

Kathy Moss and David French at Ballard/Fetherston. Sept 7-30.
A two-person exhibition featuring New York painter Kathy Moss and Seattle sculptor David French.

Caryn Friedlander and Ed Musante at Francine Seders Gallery. Sept 8-Oct 1.
Nature from opposing sides. Friedlander's loose abstractions in oils have an Impressionist feel for color and light; Musante carefully paints birds and mammals--not quite Audubon, but precise nonetheless.

They Shoot Painters, Don't They? Sept 15-16.
CoCA's eighth annual torture-the-artist party. The artists set up shop in CoCA's main gallery and create work for 24 hours straight, getting progressively more delusional, while viewers gawk, heckle, and get drunk. The resulting art is sold at an auction at the conclusion of the marathon.

Donnabelle Casis at Howard House. Sept 16-Oct 14.
More of Casis' vivid abstract paintings, with their oddly pleasing garish contrasts.

Graphic Design in the Mechanical Age at the Henry. Sept 16-Feb 18.
Posters, ads, and ephemera from between the two World Wars, from the extensive collection of Merill C. Berman. This show looks at how avant-gardism worked its way from art to graphic design, and includes work by Alexandre Rodchenko, Kurt Schwitters, and Man Ray, among others. It's a perfect example of how graphic design is sometimes the better vehicle for ideas both artistic and political.

Emotional Rescue at CoCA. Sept 28-Oct 28.
Emotional Rescue is the first exhibition of the work collected by the Contemporary Art Project, which functions as a kind of group collection for people too busy (or confused) to buy their own art. Run by former gallery-owner Linda Farris, CAP has brought some top-notch contemporary art to Seattle, and thank God for that, since the museums don't seem to have money for such things (the CAP collection will eventually be donated to a museum--locally, one hopes). This exhibition of emotionally and sexually charged art includes work by such enticing artists as Lisa Yuskavage (painter of improbably busty blondes), Cecily Brown, and Kim Dingle. If you want to know what's going on in contemporary art right now, see this show.

New Prometheans International Fire Festival at various venues. Oct 1-7.
An exhibition and festival featuring fire as the primary medium, presented by CoCA. Events include a fire-sculpture championship, performance by Ted Batchelor, a professional stunt man, and a fire organ constructed by Trimpin.

Jeanne Dunning at James Harris Gallery. Oct 5-28.
Photography and video exploring our obsessive physical and psychological relationships to our bodies, these annoying bloated bags we have to carry from here to there.

Gregory Johnson at Ballard/Fetherston. Oct 5-28.
A three-gallery exhibition of the painter's work, mounted with the cooperation of the Stephen Haller Gallery in New York and the Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta.

Shaker Objects and Their Affinities at SAM. Oct 5-April 29.
An exhibition that compares the Biblically stripped-down aesthetic of the Shakers with the religiously spare furnishings of mid-century Modern and beyond.

Michael Dailey at Francine Seders Gallery. Oct 6-29.
Cool-tempered acrylic color-fields, and mixed media on paper.

Abstraction/Construction at SOIL. Oct 8-29.
A group show about (guess what?) abstraction, smartly curated by SOIL member Noah Simblist, featuring local, national, and (one) international artists.

Susan Robb at the Pound Gallery. Oct 8-29.
Word has it that Robb will be importing the installation she's creating with Jeff Miller for this year's Burning Man: a tower of artist's urine samples. Her work is always unexpected, and always just a wee bit frightening.

Lydia Benglis at Bryan Ohno Gallery. Oct 13-Dec 2.
Metal, glass, and ceramic sculpture from the whole of the artist's career, from the '70s to the present.

Imagined Landscapes at Consolidated Works. Oct 20-late Dec.
Like last year's Artificial Life, this exhibition is going to go across all genres; all the ConWorks directors are going to put up shows investigating this same theme. Meg Shiffler's visual arts exhibition will include video work by Mariko Mori (a New York-based artist known for her intricate glass installations) and Liza Lou.

Dan Webb at Howard House. Oct 21-Nov 25.
Webb has a kind of sleight-of-hand with wood; he gives it the seamless surface of flesh or fabric or latex without ever losing its wood-ness. His sculptures aren't all technical skill, however, but also a satisfyingly plastic inquiry into the physical nature of things.

Ginny Ruffner at SAM. Nov 2-Feb 25.
Part of the Documents Northwest/PONCHO series.

As-Yet-Untitled Group Show at SOIL. Nov 4-26.
Featuring work by Yvette Franz, Margaret Meehan, Jeff Miller, Sean Vale, and Noah Simblist.

Lindsey Adams and James Dykes at Houston. Dates TBA.

Adams is from New York and Dykes from Seattle, and their work is oddly, but, it seems, perfectly matched. Adams abstracts the physical, creating pattern drawings out of human hair and tape, and Dykes builds the physical from the abstract, creating photo-montage portraits from biographical data.

Gary Smoot at the Pound Gallery. Nov 4-26.
No word yet on what Smoot plans for this show, but we can expect something sly and witty from the artist who filled a gallery with mousetraps holding Ping-Pong balls (and then set them all off at once).

C. Blake Haygood at Ballard/Fetherston. Nov 2-Dec 2.
The blocky, jury-rigged bodies and spindly attachments in Haygood's drypoint etchings might represent impossible machines for unimaginable purposes, or they might not. They might simply be pleasant arrangements of unusual objects--but I don't think so. Either way, there's a visual perfectness to them, a balance that is only made more intriguing by their obtuseness.

Stephanie Syjuco at James Harris Gallery. Nov 2-Dec 2.
Bay Area artist Syjuco takes on an aspect of my favorite dysfunctional family culture--the office--and shows how it's just not quite right. She uses a variety of media to re-create office furniture and objects, but what's familiar is never quite what you think.

Robert McNown at Francine Seders Gallery. Nov 3-26.
Dark geometric works on paper with an architectural feel.

Uta Barth at the Henry. Nov 9-Jan 21.
Barth wasn't the first photographer to look away from the squarely centered and focused subject, but her blurred, corner-of-the-eye photographs have become her most readily identifiable works. Barth, a German-born artist who now lives in L.A., lately has worked in (oh my!) focused photographs documenting what happens in a small, specific place over time. There's an obsessive quality to her work that only intensifies what appears to be the randomness of her vision. This show includes over 50 works, from the mid-'80s (when her work began to attract international attention) to the present.

Renegade Design: Art of the Rave Flyer at CoCA. Nov 11-Dec 16.
What low-tech posters (à la Art Chantry) were to the late-'80s and early-'90s, the rave flyer is to now. A new chapter in the history of graphic design.