Legend has it that when The Great Train Robbery was shown in 1903, movie goers actually leapt out of the way of the charging on-screen locomotive. Today CGI animators artificially add circles of refraction--those circles that appear on film when the sun shines into the camera lens--to feature films like Shrek 2, despite there being no cameras or film involved, just to make their animations look more real. Actors like Larry David and Kirstie Alley "play" themselves on TV, and artist Vik Muniz creates amazing reproductions of iconic photographs with chocolate syrup and spaghetti. In short, representation, realism, and trickery are fascinating topics, and Reed College is the place to get thinking about them. They currently have 43 trompe l'oeil paintings on loan from the Fresno Metropolitan museum, including one 17th-Century canvas that prompted a local artist to declare "It's exactly like Duchamp, but from 400 years ago!" Cooley Gallery at Reed College , 3203 SE Woodstock, 777-7790, Through April 24

Photographer's View: Found and Inverted Construct
Elizabeth Leach hosts a four-star photography exhibition this month featuring some seriously good prints by some seriously good blue-shippers. Just when it looked like Richard Misrach was going all soft with his Golden Gate series, he pulls off some awesome beach photos (indebted to Ray Metzker, which no one seems to mention). Adam Fuss has a few typically jaw-dropping contributions, and Sam Taylor Wood's enigmatic suspension photos are the kind of art we never thought we'd see here in lil' old Stumptown. Elizabeth Leach Gallery , 417 NW 9th Ave., 224-0521, Through April 2

Michael Brophy
Brophy is on a run of great paintings right now, and his new work at Laura Russo indicates that the streak continues. Embodying only the best aspects of regionalism (we wouldn't have James Joyce without regionalism), Brophy's canvases are masterful, metaphorical meditations on our mercurial relationship to the land. Laura Russo Gallery , 805 NW 21st Ave, 226-2754, Through April 2