After taking over Tokyo's Watari-um Museum last winter, artist couple Taylor McKimens and Misaki Kawai now divide and conquer Padua's Perugi Artecontemporanea. McKimens, who creates lumpy, oozing, comic-inspired installations and has curated exhibitions such as Stranger Town at New York's Dinter Fine Art, presents Crystal Crunch, a group of nine artists riffing on similar themes. Amy Lockhart's small paintings of angular, strong-boned women clash with Matt Leines' mythical, masked creatures while Eddie Martinez's Guston-eyed girls adorn the inside of a giant cardboard cereal box, printed with a "Crystal Crunch" logo. Amid this constellation of playful and menacing characters, an energetic, orange-faced figure blasts through a brick wall in Kawai's adjacent installation, Big Break.

-AA