Explore the menace of America’s suburbs in a new South Bay art exhibit

A new year means new museum shows. And at Santa Clara’s Triton Museum of Art, there’s not one but four exhibits opening in January, ranging from slashed-and-bleached abstractions to uncanny paintings of suburbia that hearken to Edward Hopper and David Lynch.

That latter show, opening Jan. 10, comes from South Bay artist Jonathan Crow who grew to fame with drawings of U.S. vice presidents wearing octopuses on their heads. Crow’s latest exhibit, “Cul-de-sac,” explores the false utopia of suburban life, where divisive topics on race and gender often lurk below the surface. These eerie set pieces are designed to generate a sense of “growing unease,” the artists says, and suggest “menace that looms just outside the frame.”

Opening on Jan. 17 is “Seams” by Berkeley’s Cynthia Ona Innis, who forcefully manipulates various media into abstract expressions of the artistic process. The museum explains: “The dialogue between the pigments and the textiles are uncovered through the way they respond to each other; pigments poured directly onto the fabric, bleach used to remove color, materials cut, stitched, assembled and reassembled.”

Then on Jan. 24, two shows debut by local artists Jacqueline Boberg and Emanuela Harris Sintamarian, featuring (respectively) design-influenced mixed media and something intriguing called “polyphonic images.” All in all, it’s plenty of art to kickstart 2026.

Details: Open 11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday at 1505 Warburton Ave., Santa Clara; free admission, tritonmuseum.org