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KAREL APPEL—Hahn, 960 Madison Ave. at 75th. Appel pummels the canvas in violent combat with his images, beating his nudes into a submission that they mock with their startling audacity. At Jackson, 32 East 69th, he provides his candid figures with saxophones, pearl-handled pistols, and telephones for eyes, ears and mouths. Both through April 25.
ROBERT HENRI—Chapellier, 954 Madison Ave. at 75th. Henri was best as a portraitist: with two circlets of emerald green he puts a Gaelic glint into an Irish boy's eyes. The 41 works include sketches of his fellow rebels in the Ashcan school and the well-known painting of a Chinese worker, Jim Lee. A nude that raised eyebrows at the 1913 Armory show is still a scene stealer. Through April 30.
JAMES KEARNS—Nordness, 831 Madison Ave. at 69th. An art teacher at the School of Visual Arts shows his versatility in pieces sculpted in bronze, fiber glass and concrete, and in paintings done in oil on canvas and on Masonite. His cast females are pathetically pudgy, his painted figures equally grotesque. "I flatter people verbally, not pictorially," says Kearns. But a fine sense of balance and depth wraps them in redeeming grace. Through April 18.
ROBERT COOK—Sculpture Center, 167 East 69th. An American who works in Rome, Cook sculpts in beeswax, then casts in bronze. His sinewy sculptures spin in bright, convoluted rhythms. Thirty works. Through April 30.
GEORGE SUGARMAN—Radich, 818 Madison Ave. at 68th. Sugarman piles up whorls, commas, calligraphs, and his painted wood sculptures go scrambling into space like a two-year-old clambering up a flight of stairs. They suddenly stop—and leave the next step to the imagination. Through April 11.
WILLIAM BRICE—Alan, 766 Madison Ave. at 66th. The son of Broadway's Funny Girl Fanny Brice seems to have inherited his mother's fancy for art but not her sense of humor. His tragic nudes used to flower like human vegetation in a symbolic embrace with nature; now they languish outside the bleak windows of the artist's studio. Oils and drawings. Through April 18.
PAUL MATTHEWS—Zabriskie, 36 East 61st. The first one-man show by a young New Yorker who takes his titles from James Joyce, puns with lines much as the Irish writer did with words. His major painting is the Temptation of St. Anthony; the poor saint looks absolutely abashed by the frantics of the lewd nudes who surround him in a sea of fleshy tones, raw red mouths and undulating shapes. Twenty-seven oils. Through April 18.
JUVENAL SANSO—Weyhe, 794 Lexington Ave. at 61st. Born in Spain, raised in the Philippines, a resident of Paris, Sanso, 34, is still on the move, has made two trips around the world. His lonely landscapes of Brittany, Manila and Manhattan omit the human presence, make nature the actor in richly detailed but desolate dramas. Colored ink paintings and prints. Through April 30.
ZAO WOU-KI—Kootz, 655 Madison Ave. at 60th. A Chinese expatriate in Paris, Zao Wou-ki makes a meeting place for yin and yang, feeds planes of pastoral stillness into moils of inner frenzy. Through April 18.
MIDTOWN