One has to marvel at the impressive marketing savvy of the four galleries who pooled their resources and p.r., invited four artists from their respective stables to choose favorite works from the galleries' collective inventories, then asked each artist to curate a group show for the gallery that represents them. Artistic talent does not necessarily translate to curatorial aptitude, but the results, though uneven, are interesting enough to warrant a look-see at the brainchild entitled They Knew What They Wanted, a collaborative production, if you will, of the Fraenkel, Altman Siegel, John Berggruen and Ratio 3 galleries. It's a clever way to generate buzz during the summer, a season that can be a lethargic one for galleries. But a little more context – background on the choosers, and further elaboration on what they had in mind – would have enhanced the cross-gallery experience.

The umbrella title, taken from the 1940 Garson Kanin film, is not only catchy but also apt, because the artist/curators, unconstrained by a prevailing theme or directives, were guided purely by taste and instinct. Those freedoms may have left room for surprise, but they haven't ensured coherent exhibits; and despite the temptation to make connections between them, the shows are tenuously linked at best, by educated impulse, improvisation and the slender premise that prompted the project; though, for obvious reasons, works by many of the same artists surface across exhibitions.

For Ratio 3, painter Jordan Kantor selected at least one piece from each gallery, then proceeded to include works by Trevor Paglen, Ed Ruscha, Eadweard Muybridge, August Sander and a host of others, while, according to the hand-out at Altman Siegel, Shannon Ebner focused on objects and images reduced to "units, elements and denominators." Lee Friedlander's "Egypt (1983)," a photograph of a pyramid peaking over the edge of a sandy hillside; Sam Gordon's idea-laden "Sketchbooks (1995-2010)," 21 binders filled with mixed-media works/notations on paper; and a small, gnarled bronze by Tom Otterness, "Broken Humpty Dumpty (1990)," which has taken up residence on the floor, are among the standouts.

"Pool House (2008)," oil on panel by Tom McKinley. Photo: Courtesy John Berggruen Gallery

At Fraenkel, photographer Katy Grannan picked exciting pieces by sculptors (Jim Dine's striding "Pinocchio"), painters (Nathan Oliveira's reddish-yellow "Golden Head (1986)" is a haunting alien presence or a patient recovering from a facial graft) and fellow photographers Robert Adams, Friedlander and Garry Winogrand. Diane Arbus' shot of James Brown primping is on view, and Richard Avedon is represented by In Cold Blood's infamous murderers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, brandishing their tattoos. Grannan has also put together fascinating pairings that produce unexpected alchemy; she hung one of E.J. Bellocq's disturbingly clinical, black-and-white photos of New Orleans prostitutes, "Storyville Portraits (ca. 1912)," near "Untitled Standing Figure (1957)," Manuel Neri's headless plaster sculpture streaked in garish mustard yellow and blood-red, and another above a Matisse etching. Ignition, impact!

Comparisons are inevitable, and Robert Bechtle's effort at Berggruen successfully coalesces into a satisfying whole. (Unfortunately, Saturday is the last day to see it.) Bechtle, a San Francisco-based photorealist whose paintings explore the interplay between color, light and scenes of everyday life, as well as the relationship between photography and painting, chose pieces that form a dialogue with one another and, in his words, capture "the formality of the ordinary." Add beauty to that list with Richard Misrach's chromogenic prints of a magisterial Golden Gate Bridge, shot at different times of day and with varying layers of fog; and Trevor Paglen's images of the distant lights of an Air Force Flight Test Center gleaming in the night. Other works call up a sense of place, yearned for or abandoned, and David Hockney, who never seems far away. Take the color aquatint etching by Isca Greenfield-Sanders "Green Suit Bather (2006)," or Tom McKinley's idyllic "Sardinia (2009)" and the gorgeous "Pool House (2008)," glass dream-houses set in a paradise of glacier-blue infinity pools beckoning at sunset.

There's lots to like here.

John Berggruen through July 31; Fraenkel through Aug. 21; Altman Siegel through August 7; Ratio 3 through Aug. 13.

Berkeley Art Museum Perpetual and furious refrain. Whether deliberately enigmatic, an indulgence of ego, a flight of imagination or a combination of all three, installations are vehicles that can dazzle, intrigue or confound. Judging from Perpetual and furious refrain, an enthralling installation, and its companion, Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then, an animated fable, Brent Green has a sensibility to be reckoned with, and a talent that deserves to be cultivated. Builder, sculptor, inventor of music-making machines, Green, who has constructed houses and movie sets, crashed cars and hung wooden stars and a giant glowing moon from wires, among other things, is a multifaceted fellow with ideas to burn. Some of the elements in his latest opus look like battered time-traveling contraptions that dropped in from a Terry Gilliam film.

One is enticed into the gallery by two tattered paper accordions on iron music-stands which appear to have endured some hard knocks, and a "choir" of 13 tall and willowy, elongated Watusi-like wooden figures with hand-scrawled faces and hair. Holding megaphones or old-fashioned phonograph speakers in the shape of flower blossoms and "singing" to an unseen audience, each warbler is attached by copper tubing to a continually rotating drum resembling a cement mixer (actually a salvaged water tank), a creaky sound machine emanating 13 separate tracks, which Green modeled on Thomas Edison's wax cylinder recorders. Perpetual motion generates a perpetual refrain, and music is a means to deliver coded, ecstatic messages. Don't miss it.

Perpetual and furious refrain through Sept. 12. Info: www.bampfa.berkeley.edu