The Brooklyn-based artist Alex Sewell plays with the concept of fatherhood, exploring themes of nostalgia, responsibility, and fragility. His patchwork surfaces, his frames within frames, create eerie depictions that feel hauntingly abstract. There’s a sense that maybe something is missing or remains to be seen. Sewell even asks what happens when the word “dad” is stripped of its parental significance. What if “dad” was about authorship? How would it feel for “dad” to be about creation more broadly? —Clara Molot