Chinese artist Ying Yefu creates blatantly macabre paintings with a punchline. It’s as if each piece involves some sort of visual joke, where one detail is altered in such a way that the forms we thought we recognized are not what they seem. A cranium peeled open to reveal red blood doubles as a watermelon parted down the middle. An infant’s body is hybridized with a phallic, fleshy appendage that extends out of his head lopsidedly. Part of the visual pleasure of Ying’s work is deducing the various incongruous elements at play in each piece. While Ying’s art is reminiscent of the creepy-cute aesthetic popularized by Japanese painters of the generation before him (Ying was born in 1980), much of his work is executed using traditional Chinese painting techniques that tie his unmistakably contemporary style to his cultural heritage.
Pop, outsider art, comic books, graffiti art, and other influences are blended in the striking paintings of 
Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s affecting mixed-media portraits recently returned in the show "Always Felt, Rarely Seen" at 
Serge Gay Jr. offers a love letter to resort city Palm Springs in his new show, "P.S. I Love You," at Voss Gallery. Bathed in sunshine and a Mid-Century Modern sensibility, the works are a stirring blend of acrylics and graphite. “Popularized in the 1930s as a fashionable getaway for the Hollywood elite, the human-built utopia has become a haven for creatives lured to the vast desert as an artistic escape and source for inspiration,” the gallery says. The show, which begins on Oct. 11, runs through Nov. 2 at the San Francisco space.