Until Jamian Juliano-Villani’s paintings began to appear in galleries a couple of years ago, we didn’t know how much we needed them. The Brooklyn-based artist gathers images from multiple sources, including comics, animations, 3-D computer graphics and nature photographs, into allusive compositions whose DNA includes the work of James Rosenquist and Peter Saul.
Three large paintings cover the walls in her show “Crypod.” In Windmills of Humanity, a naked woman—distorted into a long, flesh-toned smear—slides on tires through a rocky landscape. A red planet hangs above in an otherworldly sky. In Penny’s Change, a puffer-clad girl with no eyes but a gaping, almost toothless mouth smiles proudly in a desert wasteland. And in the bedroom scene Fly Kama Sutra, a green alien male fondles a green, large-breasted alien female.
Juliano-Villani’s paintings are done right on the canvas with brush and spray gun, resulting in scale, complexity and just the right amount of wrong.—Anne Doran