Continuing through May 23, 2026

R. Colosky’s paintings are delightfully peculiar. Considering how often we see art that looks like other art we have already seen, peculiarity is a good thing. Colosky has executed a wide variety of projects across multiple media, including public sculpture. He brings an exceptional array of methods and influences into his painting process. These skills contribute to the distinctive look his works achieve. This exhibition of 11 paintings and two freestanding sculptures dating from 2024 to 2026 make the case. Each work functions like a self-contained echo chamber populated with a small chorus of formal and iconographic operations that co-habit picture spaces. Such spaces are almost but not quite random and precisely organized at the same time.

These works were executed in a narrow range of airbrushed acrylic colors ranging from Prussian to cobalt blue, applied in layers atop white canvas surfaces so as to conjure both Asian and Dutch ceramic glazing traditions. They also smoothly allude to old-timey construction blueprints. Often, these works feature sharp perpendicular graphic shapes that subdivide the picture planes. In a few cases they get overbearingly rigid. The shapes serve as anchors for other elements, which usually move freely in different distances, like a floating parade whose ghostly evocations subtly dissolve into the white backgrounds. Because they are spray-painted through stencils at varying angles and distances, they look like penumbral hallucinations made vivid by a few incidents of over spray. 

Part of the reason for this is that the white backgrounds produce illusory afterimages that register as yellow or pink, all caused by an optical effect rather than a painterly one. Wispy clouds are articulated with a fluid wet-into-wet technique, while other more substantial cloud shapes are formed into billowing coils that look like floating snails, evoking traditional Tibetan mandala stylistics. In addition to the recurring clouds, we also see surveillance cameras, sinister hummingbirds, combat aircraft, cell towers, octopi and hot air balloons making repeated appearances throughout the series.

Were Colosky’s stencils hand cut? Clearly, some were, while others look like they might be the product of a CNC cutter. A few of the more ornamental shapes might have been sourced from commercial stencil books, but they always seem to be part of the same shape vocabulary. That leads us to consider the question of what purpose can that vocabulary be said to address. An at least partial answer points to the ways that Colosky’s paintings evoke cinematic, digital, and even AI allusions. The tension between their graphic and iconographic aspects implies a harsh editorial hand losing its grip. Random phantoms escape into ethereal realms. In most of these works, the graphic elements bear the aesthetic stamp of ancient Egyptian paintings. They frequently subdivide their pictorial and hieroglyphic elements into horizonal and vertical registers that organize multiple layers of content. In many ways, the normal operations of Web design follow this suit, oftentimes subordinating written commentary to graphic strategy. 

Colosky’s paintings are pointedly mindful of the way that layered Web design strategies favor animated banners intruding into the contemporary visual environment. This is reminiscent of the way that Pop artists reflected how graphic design innovations saturated the visual environments of the 1950s.

“Don’t Forget Your Earthquake Pants” also evokes some aspects of 1960’s and 1970s experimental cinema, notably found in Patrick O’Neill’s films “7362” (1967) and “Runs Good” (1970). Both make use of a device called an optical printer, allowing for multiple film footages to coalesce and fragment at different speeds within the same projection. 

In addition to the paintings, the exhibition also includes two free standing works that might be taken as maquettes for larger outdoor projects. Titled “The Way We Were” (2023) and “Side Effects May Include Impermanence” (2026), these works incorporate refrigeration units, copper tubes and colored Freon that freeze themselves into forms that resemble giant paper clips perched on small beds of topsoil. The refrigeration units create frosty condensation on the outside of the tubes, which eventually drips onto the topsoil to irrigate nearby plots of grass. These hydroponic fantasy-forms do not seem to be of a piece with the paintings, but that’s okay, even if they use more energy than they produce.