Sadie Benning, “Green God”

From a distance you might mistake Benning’s colorful cartoon primitive paintings for quilts, as her images are rendered on wood panels incised in areas of shallow relief that conform to the contours of the works’ pictorial elements. Spread out over two galleries (one in midtown, the other on the lower east side), Benning’s figures, landscapes and quasi-abstract compositions, are imbued with an aggressively off-kilter whimsy that feels vaguely disquieting.