Once again, ARTINFO has sent its intrepid staff into the streets of New York, charged with reviewing the art they saw in a single (sometimes run-on) sentence. (To see our One-Line Reviews as an illustrated slideshow, click here.)

Matthew Benedict, “Americana” at Alexander and Bonin, 132 Tenth Avenue, through March 9

Stepping into this exhibition recalls the experience of running across a vintage small-town pharmacy on a  New England backroad, one packed with antique typewriters, mysterious trinkets, and dusty logbooks long-steeped in rural mysteries and folklore; Matthew Benedict's sculptures of objects such as a Lovecraft-inspired collection of vintage bottles strung with pendulums and a wall relief replica of a cluttered late-19th century shopkeeper’s desk evoke a sense of objects once invested with histories that were both captivating and somewhat unsettling, but are now lost in a digital age. — Lori Fredrickson

“How to Tell the Future From the Past” at Haunch of Venison, 550 West 21st Street, through March 2

There is really not much tying the artists in this group show together except for their abilities to make me feel profoundly uncomfortable — which is perhaps the point — but nearly a week after I saw the show I am still haunted by the nightmarish haze of London-based artist Justin Mortimer’s paintings (I’d describe “Tract” as horror movie-meets-Gerhard Richter) and intrigued by Eve Sussman and Angela Christlieb’s landscape-distorting cyclical video work taken from the window of a moving train, “How to Tell the Future From the Past.” — Shane Ferro

Maria Loboda, "General Electric" at Andrew Kreps Gallery, 525 West 22nd Street, through February 16

Of the eclectic objects in Maria Loboda's first solo show chez Kreps — including vintage military beds, hive-like clusters of desert rose selenite on the ceiling, and collages of English garden topiaries under skies of veined marble — the most compelling is a steel sculpture running along the edges of the gallery walls, a strange subversion of the white cube aesthetic that eloquently gets at her theme of trying to control unwieldy forces. — Benjamin Sutton

Nicolas Touron, “Play Ground” at Stux Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, through February 23

Nicholas Touron's neon, cartoonish environments are populated by figures harking back to the grossly stretched and engorged characters from the 1990s TV show “Rocco's Modern Life,” and littered with vague political jabs — like the moniker “IMF” scrawled across bulbous and toy-like warplanes — which, taken together, make the chaotic paintings read like playfully cynical and non-linear comic strips. — Alanna Martinez

Jaimie Warren, “The Whoas of Female Tragedy II” at The Hole, 312 Bowery, through February 6

The Pepto-Bismol colored floor and faint smell of cigarette smoke at the Hole lends itself to the gritty commentary on female stereotypes that Kansas City-based artist Jamie Warren undertakes in her Cindy Sherman-esque photos, where the artist places herself as the star in re-creations of famous paintings and in parody images of celebrities — namely celebrities as food, i.e. Warren as “Lasagna Del Ray” — to comment on how women are depicted in art history, the internet age, and contemporary culture. — Terri Ciccone