"Surreal" as an evocative descriptor loses all meaning when a show like the Walker Art Center's "Midnight Party" goes up. As if one film by Matthew Barney isn't bizarre enough to incite a week's worth of nightmares and/or inspire a streak of creativity sure to have critics and family members questioning your sanity/brilliance, imagine Barney in the same show with Robert Mallary, Bruce Conner, Willem de Kooning, Edvard Munch, and Joseph Cornell. Believe it. "Midnight Party," feauturing works from the Walker collection curated by Joan Rothfuss, is arranged around the theme of fantasies, visions, and hallucinations dreamed up by artists of the past 150 years. Prints, paintings, film, and sculpture are among the media included in the show. A room-size Wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities) will include short films and specimen-like works with a serious gross-out factor.
