From the makers of Internet-famous snow-globe sculptures “Travelers”, comes a C-print series of miniature adventures starring unattended children, captured priests, and a giant mystical dog, all covered in night, all tiny, tiny tiny tiny. “Dystopian Kinderland” is one of P.P.O.W. Gallery’s locutions. Catchy, huh? If you like miniatures a lot, so much that you don’t even need ‘em to be strung up erotically Japanese rope bondage-style, come see these wintry forestscapes with a slightly surrealist twist (and yes, they will have those snow-globes too) at “Night Falls,” Walter Martin & Paloma Muñoz, Feb 9 – Mar 10, P.P.O.W. Gallery, NYC.

“Occupying” the Museum of Sex, 20 artists “who have pushed notions of propriety into provocation on the street” — or, their stuff has lots of tits, many dicks — have brought their work inside, most notably the William Thomas Porter and Andrew H. Shirley “Fuck Bike #001.” It’s been to Basel. It’s been in a lot of places. It’s a sculptural, bike-hybrid system of pedals, chains, tires and a prosthetic phallus that does what you think it does. Watch the NSFW video.

Interactive art! Comes surrounded by collage’d murals, sculptures, sex toys de glass beads applique and other festive, festive stuff. “F*CK ART: A Street Art Occupation at the Museum of Sex,” Feb 8 – Jun 10, MoSex, New York.

The “Soldier” series by Suzanne Opton was previously featured and gigantic billboards in nine US cities and set off enough people to spark a debate about the image of America’s military.

Presumably, such portraiture doesn’t bode well for recruitment — heads plastered sideways, eyes heavy or pressed shut, weathered, unguarded faces letting slip that 355 days in Iraq of 295 days in Afghanistan have been hell and it’s less “be all you can be” and more “what am I still doing here?” Blow up to 40″ x 50″ archival prints, pair them with portraits of blanket-wrapped veterans undergoing war trauma treatments, and it gets grisly.

It really grinds. There’s still time to see them at: “Soldier/Many Wars,” Suzanne Opton, Jan 5 – Feb 11, Platform Gallery, Seattle

I’ll say it again, Kris Kuksi’s sculptures need to be seen in person. See all the obsessive sculptural nuances by the modern Rococo master up close. Don’t just squint at the .jpgs but come and walk up to these floating islands, dripping in details, blooming with guns barrels, anachronistic soldiers, machines in decay. What is it about growing up lonely in rural Kansas in a broken home that makes one make stuff like this? Beats us. See the freshest, like the mythical-themed first three above at: Kris Kuksi, “Triumph,” Mar 8 – Apr 7, Joshua Liner Gallery, NYC

David LaChapelle’s “Earth Laughs in Flowers” series takes from the Dutch Masters’ still life and its opulent piles of fruit, only, his throws in some signifiers of the modern age that “explore contemporary vanity, vice, the transience of earthly possessions and, ultimately, the fragility of humanity.” It’s all vapid hues of pink and yellow, plasticine sheen and nothing subtle: Silicone assholes, Vienna sausages, blooming, flowers, wet fruit, a praying mantis, blood-splattered wine-glasses, more flowers, more fruit, clouds of cigarette ash, Cheetos, junk, a toy airplane, a burning American flag. See them for the first time on US soil at “David LaChapelle: Earth Laughs in Flowers,” Feb 23 – Mar 24, Fred Torres Collaborations, NYC

A one-man trailer park, old hippies in the desert, a monk in a ghost town — Alec Soth traveled 20,000 miles tracking these modern-day hermits for the mysterious, unsettling series Broken Manual. These men trust Soth. They leave their caves and cabins and pose for portraits. They show off their make-shift huts, home-made shivs and lonely rubber fuck holes. They just want to be left alone. Gawk at them with this highly anticipated New York show at the Sean Kelly Gallery. The accompanying road trip documentary Somewhere to Disappear plays hourly. “Broken Manual,” Alec Soth, Feb 3 – Mar 11, Sean Kelly Gallery, NYC

Throughout the 1950′s, Greenpoint-born bank-industry dude Frank Oscar Larson was handy with the Rolleiflex, capturing “the life of the streets” and “candid portraits of working stiffs” on his weekends. Culled from a recently uncovered hoard of thousands of unseen negatives, the Queens Museum of Art’s exhibition features shots from Chinatown to the Hell’s Kitchen to Times Square to Central Park, with ladies with gams and street urchins without teeth and Brando still in theaters. Don’t even try to feign nostalgia on this one. You’re not that old. “Frank Oscar Larson: 1950s New York Street Stories,” Feb 5 – May 20, Queens Museum of Art, Queens

The self-described “New Young Japanese Photographer” (dude was born in 1985) was previously featured in Lombard Freid’s “Minor Cropping May Occur” show, exposing the erratic, cramped, stereotype-shattering scenes of his family life. He’s since wandered off into the arms of this lady. Looks like some raw stuff, very unpretentious, casual but charged enough to be compelling. “Lovesody,” Motoyuki Daifu, Jan 26 – Mar 3, Lombard Fried Projects, NYC.

There’s some choice sculptures below too, but first, watch him talk about his style is really not style at all but rather “the desire not to have a style” and his inspirations are really just adverse reaction to “banal pop culture.” Everything is just a little too clever to be disturbing, but people really are dismal, a little hopeful, but miserable, and then they sort of live, kill, try to make art, shit, die, I know, I know, and it really it feels like David knows who I am and what I want. Ooh, he got a haircut too. Look at him, he’s all shy and stuff. Sigh-h-h. “Brian Activity,” David Shrigley, Feb 1 – May 13, Hayward Gallery, London

This Unreal Estate serigraph series by Austin-based artist Tim Doyle takes you to Moe’s, the Seinfeld diner and all other “locations” you’ve been going to for decades, but not really. Or yes, really. Don’t pretend that these works with their bold hues and heavy, comic-book lines don’t conjure up a chummy feeling of familiarity. “These places are in our memories transmitted and entrenched there through a cathode-ray tube,” from the time you zombied out in front of your parents’ rickety television circa Simpsons’ first season, to the time you… zombied out in front of your Megaupload stream of the Simpsons’ fifteenth season. Ah, life, huh? “Unreal Estate,” Tim Doyle, Feb 2 – Feb 23, Spoke Art Gallery, San Francisco.