Four of the new season’s best shows are hot and sensual rather than cool and conceptual–though they’re not lacking ideas. At Bodybuilder and Sportsman, Leslie Baum’s abstracted landscapes based on her travel photos are striking for the way their contrasting forms intensify the lovely colors. Flat tan rocks outlined in black in I Remember Rock River Valley suggest a cartoon style while large washes of fuzzy browns and grays are as diffuse as clouds. In Feather Weight, outlined rocks in pastel colors hover illogically above hazy areas in similar colors; below and to the right, smaller dark rocks actually cast shadows, as if firmly planted on the ground. Baum says these paintings are “distillations and fanciful reworkings of a location,” and the contrast between realistic renderings and floating rocks does remind us of the subjectivity of our perceptions.
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