Trudy Benson’s painting is full of physical energy. The paint is applied so thickly that it turns into an object in its own right; the stripes and circles on the canvas look like moveable parts. Fittingly, most of the pieces in her show at Mike Weiss Gallery, Actual/Virtual, evoke outer space with their names—“Cosmic Comics,” “Stellar Evolution”—and with the gravitational games they play.

Looking at “Red Giant,” for example, is like launching into orbit. The painting is overwhelming: a fat red center and a series of black rings, some shading into purple. It’s hard to know where to focus; there are so many rings and curves, nearly echoing each other, drawing your eye in constant new directions. Then, a green line as raw as space itself cuts across the front of the sphere. In the end, you feel you’ve circled a new planet.

“Holographix” also suggests constant motion. Black paint as thick as tire treads moves across the canvas; little stenciled balloons rise from below and a bold pink stripe hangs, promisingly, above a blue window. Your eye travels up, leaving behind a crosshatched black-and-yellow base and entering entirely new territory, free of geometry.

After all this, “Sweet and Lowdown,” which hangs next to “Red Giant,” feels like a little valley of peace. Its peachy center is round and inviting; the little red circles crossing the painting keep to a reassuring rhythm. The rather strident crosshatching on the painting’s perimeter reminds you to focus on the little pocket of peace in the middle.

“Yellow Painting” is similarly cheering. I at least had to smile at its look of warm certainty, the sweet, uneven white stripes moving up to a soft beige field covered in yellow paint suggested a meadow full of wildflowers and made me feel that I’d returned from a long trip through space.

Actual/Virtual
Through Nov. 12, Mike Weiss Gallery, 520 W. 24th St., 212-691-6899, www.mikeweissgallery.com.

The China Institute is aiming high right now. Its curators want to show us why Chinese artists, after years of state-imposed social realism, have lately “taken the art world by storm” with their very modern style. Thus, the Institute’s current exhibit, Blossoming in the Shadows: Unofficial Chinese Art, 1974–1985 looks for the modernist roots in the underground art of the 1970s and ’80s.

Some of the work is exciting indeed. I was stunned by Jiang Depu’s “Black Symphony,” a series of three pen and ink landscapes. To my Western eyes, at least, the swirling ink lines look a lot like traditional Chinese painting. But Jiang takes those lines and breaks them up, so the mountains seem to float above us. In “Mountain Creek,” my favorite of the series, the lines turn choppy, cascade into each other and form big ink blots. The result is a free-rolling stream and a highly personal dreamscape, very far indeed from social realism.

Another standout is Wang Keping’s wood sculpture, “Silent.” A dark, beautifully whorled wooden head looks at us while a wooden stopper fills his mouth. The piece is so physical that I longed to reach in and pull that stopper out. The renowned Ai Weiwei also has a few pieces in the show, poking fun at small-minded bureaucrats; they’ll make you smile, although they’re not precisely passionate.

Other pieces here, though, cannot stand on their own merit. The room dedicated to the so-called “Wuming” or “no name” group looks a lot like an amateur arts fair, full of vaguely post-impressionist paintings of houses and flowers. Du Xia’s works impress with their poignancy, as if the artist has deliberately shrunk her worldview down to the size of a vase of autumn leaves. But for the most part, the Wuming movement reminds us that, just as political oppression can inspire great art, censorship can also stunt some of our most promising artists.

Blossoming in the Shadows: Unofficial Chinese Art, 1974–1985
Through Dec. 11, China Institute, 125 E. 65th St., 212-744-8181, www.chinainstitute.org.