In David Humphrey’s painting Cleaning Up, a tough-girl protagonist leans back as she smokes a neon-tipped cigarette and watches a flirtatious interaction between a nearby tree’s hollows and the eyes on her shirt. The tree ogles, and the shirt—or the young woman’s chest—stares back with cheerful, saucy reciprocity. The girl knows what’s up, unperturbed and…

Kiki Smith has a way with wonder. In her careful yet playful depictions of the natural and the fantastic, she occupies pictorial space with a cast of characters whose relationship to reality is delightfully ambiguous. In keeping with this embrace of the almost possible—as opposed to what is simply familiar—narrative is often left open: momentary…