Matthew Offenbacher is a very clever artist, but he is also very sincere. Does art take itself too seriously? His paintings seem to ask this question all the time, while also having an almost spiritual dimension. Usually he paints wildlife—linking modernist abstraction with, say, beavers or otters or weasels—but in this show, he pushes the point further by featuring his lazy house cat as if the cat were any other muse-model. The cat is pictured at rest and in motion; there's even a view the cat might have had when it was once stuck up a tree. (Howard House, 604 Second Ave, 256-6399. 10:30 am–5 pm, free.)