Matt Lifson’s distorted, lovely, but dark dreamscapes tell stories that are both realistic and subversive. With distinctive color palettes that are at times overwhelming, elements of his imagery are both subtly ominous and at the same time luminous. In “Reflector,” a blue and white image of a man approaching a dazzling light in a pool of water, we sense both fear and hope as the figure gropes toward the unknown brightness. “Carmen Asleep,” which envelopes the eye with another blue, nighttime palette, depicts a sleeping woman wearing an eye shade, adrift in a sea of opulent sheets. The eye shade serves to ward off the real world so she my withdraw into her dreams; we feel the presence of something ominous just out of sight. Thematically and formally, Lifson’s work is rich and layered, images that invite us to contemplate the emotion expressed in each piece.
With three disparate types of work on display, Georganne Deen’s “Psychic Violence in America” addresses the overt and covert marketing of violence and evil run amuck in today’s world. Deen’s remarkably potent portraits of men are the result of a process involving the creation of images made of clay covered with foil, which she photographed, and then painted. “Architect of the Toxic Bundle” is an artfully rendered, toxic portrait of corrupt mortgage broker Lew Ranieri. Deen utilizes fashion illustrations in her exhibition’s section of female portraits, in which the familiar format serves up women who appear alien, inhuman as in “CEO of Goldman Sachs on trial at the Hague in Balmain.” This carefully rendered image endows its central character with tentacles and unseeing eyes. In the third iteration of her work here, Deen utilizes found photographs, eliminating and adding images to create a powerful social commentary
