It’s hard to look away from New York artist Christina Nicodema’s vividly colored paintings, packed with brightly plumed birds, a dramatic mandrill baring its teeth and piles of edibles designed to entice. Like a contemporary interpretation of traditional Dutch genre painting, the images bring together plants and creatures from different environments in a celebration of excess, but Nicodema’s addition of porcelain, a painted egg and a cake dangerously ablaze with candles hints at the costs of luxury and human desires. (On view at Hollis Taggart Contemporary through Feb 22nd).
