The Woods is a trilogy of video installations by renowned South African artist Candice Breitz that takes a close look at the world of child performers and the performance of childhood in order to probe the dreams and promises embedded in mainstream cinema. Consistent with Breitz's interest in the role that mimicry plays in the forging of selfhood and her ongoing analysis of the circular relationship between real life and reel life, The Woods traverses three continents to explore the rituals and conventions governing the on camera and off-camera personae of professional child actors, as well as adult actors who have become famous playing child roles.

The trilogy brings together footage shot in Los Angeles, Mumbai and Lagos, seeking to observe and grasp the aspirational logic that is shared by Hollywood, Bollywood and Nollywood. Engaging actors and crews whose creative labor would ordinarily be subsumed into these three giant popular cinema industries, the three chapters of The Woods bring a behind the-scenes eye to industries that typically prefer to mask their inner workings. On view through Sept. 6.

Blending traditions of genre, style and periodization, Housewares presents a new series of paintings and sculptures by Francesca DiMattio. Fluctuating between illusionism and abstraction, high art and craft, DiMattio's work explores ideas of the domestic and the decorative, gender and class. The Pattern Paintings present "undone interiors," where furnishings and objects collide in continually shifting planes. They are intricately layered scenes in which textiles, plastics and varied textures of paint are laid over a drawing of rope and string alternately confirming and denying the demarcated spaces.

With images and patterns dissolving into one another, every passage describes both an element from the nameable world of interiors and an abstract shape existing outside of it. Often comparing the rhythm of her painting to weaving, DiMattio fuses found objects, materials and motifs to build abstract compositions where each element is recognizable but does not behave as it should. Likewise, her sculptures fuse together different traditions and techniques in exuberant collisions of materials and forms that look-but do not act-like vases, teapots, cups or chandeliers. On view through Aug. 30.

To celebrate the opening of these two exhibitions, the Blaffer Art Museum hosts a special Sunday brunch teeming with mimosas and fare from Pondicheri.