JOHN BANKSTON PAINTS a fantastical world of male (or at least masculine) characters, including a leatherman with an eye patch, a ringmaster in a top hat, bearded ladies, a tribe of men wearing bird headdresses, and a band of masked wrestlers. His paintings are set in the woods where a circus has pitched its tent, and they present portraits of these various personalities along with scenes of them interacting. Bankston employs paint with the economy of a drawer, and the figures in his pictures look almost like comic-book characters – because of their elaborate costumes and because of the way they are outlined. His palate is bright and colorful. And the curved lines of his compositions give his paintings an effeminate air, which informs their exploration of the ambivalence of gender. In Before the Match, three masked wrestlers stand together talking in their bodysuits. They are athletes sharing the camaraderie of a specifically male context. They could be brothers or merely friends. But there is also something distinctly erotic about the scene. The wrestlers' suits bulge, and we know they are about to engage in a hot, sweaty embrace. In Rose Bush, one man rides on the back of another picking roses from a bush. The sexuality of the image is unavoidable, but again the scene might also be familial or merely friendly. The fantastical quality of Bankston's pictures makes them psychologically immediate, and the distinct characters in the scenes he depicts might just as well be thought of as different aspects of mental life. Love, friendship, and sexual desire inform one another in complex ways – presenting a broad spectrum of different possible relationships between men and different possible ways of identifying as a man. In Step Right Up, a carnival barker invites the viewer to a fair, complete with tents, a lion, a bearded lady, a wrestler strongman, and a ride swirling over their heads. For Bankston, gender – and masculinity in particular – is a circus sideshow in which we all are exotics. In the same building, Heather Marx Gallery's current show, "Passage," presents work by Forrest Williams, which also addresses questions concerning male identity and relationships between men – although from a more anxious and alienated vantage. Together the two shows make a particularly interesting study. Tues.-Fri., 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m., 77 Geary, S.F. (415) 982-3292. (Clark Buckner)