Among the artists featured in “Shelter” (through Feb. 14), Seattle photographer Zack Bent gets prominent placement. In part, that’s because his large-format prints take up a lot of wall space. Also, among the nine other artists featured in this domestic-themed group show, his simple yet mysterious images are the clearest distillation of the quotidian strangeness of home life. Children build living room forts out of couch cushions and blankets. Kids burrow into the shrubbery to retrieve some lost object (or maybe just to burrow). Faces hidden, hide-and-seek games seem both playful and earnest—because who wants to become an adult, really? In his Bloodline, a boy gives his father a bathroom haircut with a pair of child-safe scissors. Safe for the child, that is. It’s an “Ooops!” moment of the first order, but also a portrait in patient (and painful) parental forbearance. Also featured are small paintings of empty Modernist chairs by Gabriel Fernandez and colorful, abandoned toilets and other salvage-yard finds in Robert Welsh’s large photographs. BRIAN MILLER

Feb. 2-14, 10:30 a.m., 2009