Boston-based Christopher Adams presents more than 700 unique wall-mounted ceramic objects in Natural Selection his first exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery. Lush and phantasmagorical, these exquisitely crafted specimens showcase the exuberant freedom of a self-taught artist.

Adams’ art plays on the concept in biological speciation called “adaptive radiation,” in which a pioneering organism enters a relatively untapped environment, reproducing profusely while differentiating rapidly and extensively. At the same time, the organism never departs too dramatically from the original form.

While each of Adams’ sculptures starts with a common structure, they evolve into uniquely sensuous and ornate forms and finishes. Some are broad and brightly-colored like the brilliant bird-wing butterflies of the Old World tropics; others are mottled and shrunken or morphologically reduced. Some appear floral, others cephalopodal, and others have no identifiable counterpart in nature.

Christopher Adams was born in Medford, MA and began experimenting with ceramics as a teenager. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard where he majored in organismic and evolutionary biology. His work is in the collection of the Museum of Art and Design in New York.

Jeremy Stenger’s second one-person exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery features new paintings that expand Stenger’s rich world of pattern, color and surface.

Stenger draws reference from antique textiles, cloisonné and complex glazes on porcelain, but he can also be influenced by something as common as the pattern on his pillowcase. In his new work, decorative history and contemporary pop culture coalesce on canvas to create an archive of the artist’s inspirations and obsessions.

Jeremy Stenger was born in San Diego, CA and lives in Brooklyn. He received his BFA from California College of the Arts and his MFA from Hunter College, New York.

In her first solo exhibition in New York Cornucopia, West Coast painter Rachell Sumpter exhibits a group of gouache and pastel works on paper with narratives that exist somewhere between documentation and myth.

Dwarfed by the environments they populate, her characters - sometimes masses of them - intently engage in purposeful activity. Or could it be ritual? When does habit overtake reason? In lush jewel-tones Sumpter presents fables that may or may not have happy endings.

Rachell Sumpter was born in Los Angeles in 1972. She studied at the American Academy in Italy before receiving her BFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.