Charles Shepard, executive director of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, says he and his staff “really pulled out all the stops” for this year’s Contemporary Realism Biennial.

“We said, ‘Let’s not be afraid of a duck landing on someone’s head,’ ” he says.

Consequently, they were unafraid. And then the duck landed.

That’s contemporary realism for you.

It seems like a pretty straightforward concept until a duck lands on someone’s head.

Contemporary realism is not just paintings of things that look almost exactly like photographs of those same things.

It’s also the work of Cincinnati artist Leslie Shiels, who has two portraits in the show that feature humans interacting in unexpected and vaguely ludicrous ways with birds (like the aforementioned duck).

It’s other portraits like those of Paul Loehle that are filled with dread and foreboding.

And it’s a party scene like Teresa Dunn’s in which someone may be trying either to bury a plastic Santa or to dig up the sun. Or both.

Shepard says some of the more traditional and classical-seeming pieces in the show can reveal their quirkiness on closer inspection.

A photorealistic dancing girl seems familiar enough until you realize she is dancing across the surface of a lake.

And a painting of a child playing in an innocuous backyard grows less innocent the longer you look at it.

In the 2010 Contemporary Realism Biennial opening today, realism can be fanciful, dystopian and stylized.

Shepard says the interplay between his curatorial duties and the artwork that is submitted is like a jam session. He may want initially to impose some blueprint on the show, but it tends to improvise itself away from such plans.

Reputation builds

Years ago, Shepard says, the biennial was a yawner – unloved and under-attended. But when the museum narrowed the show’s thematic focus and enlarged its ambitions, it became one of the most highly anticipated recurring art events in Fort Wayne.

This year, 113 artists (two invited artists and 111 juried) from 26 states will be represented in the show, Shepard says. There are 156 pieces in the exhibit.

And the show is truly national, not merely Midwestern, he says.

The reputation of the Contemporary Realism Biennial consistently grows, and part of the reason for that, Shepard says, is the attractive catalogs that the museum scrupulously designs and liberally sends out.

“The catalog brings people in,” he says. “They see it and say, ‘I want to be in that show.’ ”

This year the catalog has an electric orange cover that was somewhat inspired by the Beatles’ “White Album,” Shepard says.

“It is tastefully hot,” Shepard says.

The biennial hasn’t just brought artists and art lovers into Fort Wayne; it has sent artists out as well, Shepard says.

It has brought Fort Wayne artists to the notice of curators and art dealers in bigger cities, he says.

Fort Wayne has no good justification anymore for viewing itself as artistically isolated and marginalized because of its place on the map, Shepard says.

“There’s nothing to feel apologetic about,” he says. “Our public is as deserving as any in the country. There is no reason we can’t bring the whole country into Fort Wayne.”

spen@jg.net