The gallery shows we are most excited about this fall

The Philadelphia gallery scene is brimming with fresh energy this season. Three contemporary shows bring new perspectives that will amuse, challenge, confuse, and delight. Philadelphia mainstay Anne Minich shares enigmatic reflections of a decades-long relationship with her bald silhouette. Local curator Chelsey Luster paints love letters through layered portraits and altars to dear friends. From Oregon, Yuyang Zhang brings his cheeky yet hauntingly incisive commentary on authoritarianism and U.S.-China relations using Taylor Swift lyrics.

Here’s what we’re looking forward to seeing this fall.

Shiny, bold portraits comprise this solo exhibit from Chelsey Luster, the exhibition manager at Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, who approached her models — loved ones in Philly, New York, and her hometown of Baltimore — with anthropological yet intimate care. Interviews with each person about Blackness, queerness, and home inform the safe spaces she illustrates through layers of neon paint, glitter, fabric, and found objects. Their gazes seduce, challenge, and confront. Altars with transcripts and personal items accompany each painting; also on view is a film of two models discussing their experiences as Black women with vitiligo. The show excavates and exposes, and Luster doesn’t shy away from introspection — her gleaming self-portrait extends an invitation.

(Running through Oct. 15 at Vox Populi, 319 N. 11th St., Third floor, Phila., 215-238-1236 or voxpopuligallery.org)

In 1974, Anne Minich shaved her head. At 39, she had left her husband and children to pursue art-making full-time; her bald head became a symbol of shedding her former life as a housewife to embrace liberation through androgyny. Using her silhouette as a blank surface of possibilities, Minich began an autobiographical head series that she’s continued for nearly 50 years. The heads are typically faceless and genderless, evoking an unsettling presence while portraying a universal humanity with specific references to figures like Joan of Arc and Kamala Harris. Now 89 years old, Minich lives and creates in her home studio in Francisville. This major Commonweal exhibition will feature 32 works shown together for the first time, including recent pieces like the two-sided sculpture of wood and nails, Bitch/Saint.

(Running through Oct. 28 at Commonweal Gallery, 1607 Latimer St., Phila., 445-345-2067 or commonweal.gallery)

Wuhan-born and Portland, Ore.-based Yuyang Zhang paints disarmingly clever and often funny takes on Chinese propaganda, queerness, and American pop culture. He’s showing eight works in Philadelphia, a collection that insightfully critiques and laughs at authoritarianism in both China and the United States. In one painting, a bald eagle smiles at the communist flag, surrounded by Taylor Swift lyrics from “the 1,” comparing the countries to the song’s heartbroken lovers. Another piece, plz do not comment, violators will be prosecuted, puts Miss Minutes, an animated character who represents a fictional bureaucracy in Loki, onto a colorful TV test screen. A memory from Zhang’s childhood, the screen has nothing to broadcast, alluding to the Chinese Communist Party’s censorship; with the promise of dangerous consequences for any violators, the cutesy and sinister mascot smiles.

(Running through Oct. 15 at Fuller Rosen Gallery, 319 N. 11th St Unit 3-I, Phila., fullerrosen.com)