March 22 (Bloomberg) -- Danish painter Maja Lisa Engelhardt approaches her abstract landscapes as if each were a battle.

``I fight with my brushes, I fight with my hands,'' said Engelhardt at the opening of her new show, ``The Second Day,'' at Elizabeth Harris Gallery in Manhattan.

Engelhardt, who's tall and energetic, explores the second day of creation as told in Genesis, when the water was separated from the firmament, with 18 works in acrylic on linen. Ranging in size from 3-by-4 feet to 7-by-8 feet, these turbulent, moody pieces are layered with brushstrokes. In some paintings, you can detect baby blue or pale yellow underneath the murky accumulations. In others, dark red and flaming orange dominate.

The artist, who paints in Paris, starts with several preparatory layers that make the rough linen skin-smooth. The contrast between this silky background and torrid brushstrokes creates tension -- as does the combination of her mostly stormy palette with occasional bright or pastel color.

Paintings are priced from $12,000 to $40,000. The show is on view through April 14 at 529 W. 20th St.; +1-212-463-9666; http://www.eharrisgallery.com.

Exploding Seagulls

A three-artist show, ``Stranger Than Fiction,'' at RareArt Properties Inc. could not have had a better title.

Its centerpiece is an installation by Johnston Foster of 100 seagulls suspended from the ceiling as if in mid-flight.

The birds, made of white plastic, insulation foam, plywood, puppy toys and surgical tubing, reflect an urban legend that seagulls explode when fed Alka-Seltzer. Not all of the gulls have exploded.

The show also includes a group of paintings on handmade Indian paper by Andy Cross. The artist, who got his MFA from Hunter College in 2005, recently spent two months in India. His subjects range from Bollywood to Hindu motifs, and include at least one happy-looking bong smoker in a turban.

The third artist, Jean-Pierre Roy, offers one 7-by-9-foot oil-on-canvas called ``Feast of the Bullgod,'' depicting a post- apocalyptic scene in a fictional megalopolis. The work is rendered in poisonous greens and ominous grays.

Prices range from $1,000 to $20,000. The show is on view through March 31 at 521 W. 26th St.; +1-212-268-1520; http://www.rare-gallery.com.

Naked Dancers

Elliott Hundley's first solo show at Andrea Rosen Gallery comprises paintings and three-dimensional collages.

His large-scale, obsessive collages are made from tiny components, including figures of naked men and women cut from magazines and personal photographs. The Los Angeles-based artist, who received his MFA from UCLA in 2005, stages elaborate photo shoots enlisting friends to pose and dance; then he cuts out individual figures. The works are a result of accumulation, destruction and reassembling of materials.

His ``Garland'' piece juts out from the wall horizontally more than five feet above the ground. It includes hundreds of red coffee straws painted white and hundreds of cut-out paper leaves. The work seems fragile and ephemeral, but it also has a solid- looking base made of wooden objects.

Throughout the construction, larger objects make an appearance: broken pieces of porcelain, a magnifying lens, fake flowers.

Prices range from $25,000 to $36,000. The show is on view through April 21 at 525 W. 24th St.; +1-212-627-6000; http://www.andrearosengallery.com.

(Katya Kazakina is a reporter for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Katya Kazakina in New York at kkazakina@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 22, 2007 00:04 EDT