It’s amazing what can be expressed with needle, thread, and canvas. We’re not talking centuries of samplers (which now fetch high prices as “folk art”) or high-end handwork on couture creations. The simple scenes that Swedish artist Marie-Louise Ekman stitches into blank canvases look like disembodied images from children’s books, a bleached surrealism. Threads hang from the objects pictured, a haunting sense of the unfinished. —L.J.