Celeste Rapone’s dynamic paintings at Marianne Boesky Gallery create interest through the distortions of their mostly female central figures. Viewers must first make sense of twisting limbs, then take in story-suggesting details which here include cough drop wrappers, a weed and a parking ticket at the bottom on the canvas. Dressed in a pink track suit, the woman here appears to be an over-enthusiastic volunteer, digging a cavernous hole for a tiny oak sapling, all while somehow simultaneously standing in the hole and balancing on tippy-toe on a skinny wrought iron fence. Interested in how women can ‘occupy impossible positions’ both literally and metaphorically, Rapone manifests complicated mental states in physical form. (On view through June 11th).
