The Fiesta de las Luminarias isn't the only thing lighting up San Antonio right now. Check out these excellent exhibitions, and don't miss Circulatory System's one-night-only event next weekend.

Adriana Lara, Mario Ybarra, Jr. & Adrian Esparza
Artpace
445 North Main Avenue, San Antonio
Through January 10, 2010

These are the strongest end-of-residency exhibitions I've seen at Artpace in quite a while. Adriana Lara's video of San Antonio-based artists at work, which begins with an installation of bathroom appliances spelling out the word "ARTIFICIAL," may sound saccharine in description, but is quite poignant in person. Mario Ybarra, Jr., an artist known for his community-based projects, used the residency to literally "try his hand" at something different, drawing, with great results. In my book, Adrian Esparza takes the cake. His immense quilt draws on the strategies of Conceptualism and Minimalism to depict landscape outside El Paso. I'd like to see it installed at Chinati, where its conversation with the natural and social landscapes, as well as sculptures of Donald Judd, would be powerful.

Jillian Conrad & Moo Kwon Han
Unit B Gallery
500 Stieren Street at Cedar
Through January 2, 2010

The sweetest moments in Jillian Conrad’s installation at Unit B are in the spatial relationships she establishes between objects. Three works in the series Wishing You Are Here each consist of a vintage postcard lacquered to the wall and a small modified concrete brick sculpture on the floor. Meanwhile, Moo Kwon Han's two videos are visual poetry with a healthy dose of humor, reflecting on life's constants, such as gravity.

Circulatory System's Traveling Video Show #1
Unit B Gallery
500 Stieren Street at Cedar
December 11, 7-10pm

Austin's Circulatory System is a curatorial venture on wheels. A project initiated by Kate Watson and Morgan Coy, Circulatory System travels the state in a converted school bus. Their inaugural program, Traveling Video Show #1, was organized by Austin- and New York-based performance artist Jill Pangallo, and features the work of artists from Austin, Atlanta and New York.

Gary Sweeney
Sala Diaz
517 Stieren Street at Cedar
Closing December 6, 2009

Gary Sweeney's installation is a metaphor about metaphors: a life-size house of cards. One card with an image of dice imprinted on it reads, "Sometimes disguised as idioms, gambling metaphors suit those times in ones life where change and unpredictability rule—times when we have no answers." Many such gambling metaphors have been used to describe the economic crisis of 2008/9. Sweeney's installation points to the (reverse) irony here: sometimes metaphors are only masquerading as figures of speech. Like Sweeney's actual house of cards, they're actually literal. Ouch.

Sean Ripple
Stella Haus
106A buliding B Blue Star at South Alamo Street
Reception December 4, 7-9pm

Artist Sean Ripple is deleting three years of photographic work from his hard-drive, but he isn't doing it quietly. Ripple owns up that Artificial Scarcity is "a publicity stunt of sorts." He's copied all his photos from the last three years onto discs and tossing them from the window of a moving car. Ripple explains, "if the disks are found, you'd better believe they're for sale." Otherwise, they'll be gone. This weekend, Artificial Scarcity is in San Antonio. Next weekend, you'll find the artist at Apama Mackey in Houston on Saturday, December 12, from 6-8pm and in Austin at Co-Lab on Sunday, December 13, from 6-8pm.

Claire Ruud is Associate Director of Fluent~Collaborative.