Continuing through June 30, 2012
The fittingly titled, "Detailed" features perfectly detailed show cars. Once again, hyper-photorealist painter Cheryl Kelley delivers images glistening and glinting with high sheen at high resolution; it truly does take a moment to believe they’re not photographs. However, a closer look reveals that something isn’t quite real. Kelley pushes her subject just to the edge of being too perfect — too lush, too shiny, too brilliant — without crossing the line. Here she plays with the titillating promise offered up by these curvaceous beauties, whose ultimate lure is fantasy fulfillment.
Beyond Kelley’s precision painting, what is further engaging is her interest in surface and, more specifically reflections. In the mirror-like sheen of her chosen subjects — Vettes, Jags, and Fords — we get glimpses, almost abstractly distorted over the curves of the cars’ design, of the world around them: the spectators, the building housing these cars, and/or adjacent automobiles. They are worlds within worlds, reflections, so to speak, of that which underlies these beloved symbols of beauty: sublime design and desire.
