“Charles Bukowski & Walter Robinson: There’s A Bluebird in My Heart”

Known as the “laureate of American lowlife," Charles Bukowski is represented in this show by a framed printed copy of his poem, “The Bluebird,” a meditation on the manly art of  suppressing your vulnerability—allegorized in Bukowski’s words as “a bluebird in my heart,” kept locked within himself him by alcohol and cigarettes. Both vices figure prominently in accompanying paintings by veteran artist Walter Robinson, whose work immortalizes life's necessities, guilty pleasures and agents of dependency—from Jack Daniel's and White Castle sliders to prescription meds and stacks of cash—rendered in a style recalling 1950s paperbacks covers. The hardboiled sensibility and dark irony of both artists is evenly matched here.