UPTOWN
NORRIS EMBRY—Elkon, 1063 Madison Ave. at 80th. Embry lifts the curtain on a drama in which shadows and echoes are the actors, and reality is as fleeting as a specter. With charred cinders for eyes, a face floats freely into space, tilting wanly as it rises, while tiny robed figures wander aimlessly in streams of nervous color. Embry affirms this disressing vision with a bold, negative gesture: he signs his works NO. Thirty small monotypes, mixed media and oils. Through May 16.
GRAHAM SUTHERLAND—Rosenberg, 20 East 79th. There is nothing pastoral about Sutherland's nature: a praying mantis peers from a wicked void of scarlet, a skull dangles in a tapestry of leaves and blue sky, a snake sneaks up to a formal fountain, a torso flails agains: gravity. In his own words, Britain's topflight painter makes "emotional paraphrases of reality." They have never been more horrible or beautiful. Twenty-five recent oils. Through June 5.
GERALD GLADSTONE—Graham, 1014 Madison Ave. at 78th. A young Canadian sculptor sees the universe as rigid and definite in shape, favors the cone as a fundamental form. His welded-steel Galaxies, laced with a network of rods and discs, make lively geometric studies of space and time. Through May 23.
STEPHEN GREENE—Staempfli, 47 East 77th. "There is always something terrible happening in a beautiful world," says Greene. As a figurative painter he showed it by placing live bodies in coffins. Now he abstracts the figure, with a dismembered limb or an amorphous heap of flesh leaves only the sense of the human presence. Recent works, flooded with clear uncluttered color, and drawings. Through May 23.
WALTER MEIGS—Nordness, 831 Madison Ave. at 69th. Meigs' paintings make an alluring invitation to Greece where he has lived the past two years. He often plays sea green against sky blue, counterpoints the delicate sheen of acrylic polymer with the coarseness of his mixed me dia to create spatial ambiguities in Aegean landscapes and seascapes. Through May 9.
SAM FRANCIS—Jackson, 32 East 69th. Francis translates the furious vitality of his abstract expressionism into bright, brash prints. Reds, yellows, blues and greens splash across new lithographs; one, Bright Jade, Gold, Ghost, resplendent in five colors, is shown in five variations. Through May 23.
JEAN XCÉRON—Fried, 40 East 68th. A major artistic talent, Xceron, 74, left Greece at 14 to study art in the U.S., later spent ten formative years in Paris. A colorful sampling of his graceful cubist abstractions is given in recent oils, water-colors and drawings composed with lyrical lines in delicate pastels. Through May 23.
ARTISTS FOR CORE—American Federation of Arts, 41 East 65th. Just about everyone who is anyone on the New York art scene—some 200 artists ranging from Agostini to Zorach and including Motherwell, Marisol, Rothko and Rauschenberg —has contributed paintings and sculptures for the third annual exhibition and sale to benefit the Congress of Racial Equality. Through May 16.