The protagonists of Swiss painter Vittorio Brodmann’s small-scale dramas seem to be on the verge of melding with their environments, or with each other. Caught up in a litany of psychological conundrums—underscored by titles such as Persistence of Denial and Feed Impossible Aspirations—his characters shift in and out of view, appearing as fragments, outlines or silhouettes. Feeding off comic books and sitcoms (an earlier exhibition featured a video of his stand-up routines), Brodmann’s paintings play with physical and narrative exaggeration. They also allude more quietly to digital media by echoing the size and proportions of computer screens.
In Chosen to Ignite, a monster wearing sunglasses pursues a screaming, green-skinned figure whose leg seems to be on fire. Not Enough to Endure pictures two dogs squeezed into a distinctly uncomfortable-looking composition, while in Too Little Drama (as if), a stern gray head in profile appears to crowd the purple face of a comically bug-eyed fellow out of the frame. Elsewhere, five unstretched canvases patterned like brick walls and sprinkled with doodles round things out in a pleasingly recalcitrant style.
Brodmann’s color and brushwork are as rich and unpredictable as his oblique, tragicomic scenarios, ensuring that his pieces are fun to look at even when their meaning proves elusive.