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Ann Craven, Portrait of Two Cardinals (after Picabia) (2021), Karma

Ann Craven: Animals Birds Flowers Moons
Until 1 May at Karma, 188 and 172 East 2nd Street, and 136 East 3rd Street, Manhattan

Karma has given all three of its locations—two galleries and a bookstore in lower Manhattan—over to Ann Craven for her three part solo-show, which arrives just in time for spring. As the city’s plants, animals, and inhabitants emerge from what may have been the longest, loneliest winter of our lives, we are greeted by this ebullient body of work. Craven is known for her paintings of moons and birds, and here she mines these motifs as well as dipping into an unapologetic nostalgia for fantastical childhood musings, with 7ft-tall paintings of horses galloping before flowers, glamorous peacocks, and bear cubs who peer sweetly from tree branches. The compositions are repeated exactly in multiple paintings throughout the three-venue exhibition, as if each were a prayer. Craven’s belief in the power of beauty, and the unique earnestness, skill, humour, and charm on display here, prevent the works from delving into saccharine territory, instead keeping them ever enticing.