September 1, 2010
Ann Craven is unafraid of sentimentality; she brazenly fills her shows with pretty paintings of deer, parakeets, flowers, and moons. All are based on images found on tricks here. The show was divided evenly into two rooms, with each set of nine paintings almost the mirror image of the other. But the works in the second space were lusciously bad, packed with accidents of scale and perspective, aggressively assembled with the vigor of an artist in a hurry to see her ideas come to fruition. It was mandatory for viewers to go back and forth between the rooms, comparing the versions in order to appreciate Craven’s maddening talent for reproduction. Rather than demonstrating pure trickery, this show packed an emotional wallop, making the subject of death doubly inescapable. – Barbara Pollack
