Alex Kanevsky in ArtNews, September 2007

K.C. 1, oil on mylar, 31x19

Alex Kanevsky paints subjects other than nudes, but nudes are what he does best. He depicts them in a strange and disturbing manner so that his images have a ghostly intensity. In this show of 19 works. all 2006-7, he continued to blur the line between photography and painting, rendering figures in it style that might be described as impressionist realism

Using a palette of pale blues, greens, and grays, Kanevsky mimics the kind of transparency found in Degas' nudes. He conveys an aura of antiquity and, by ex- tension, lends his ordinary figures a remarkable dignity. In K.C. I and K.C. 2--the initials stand for the subject's name--the woman's aging body, described in subtle pink and gray, is presented deadpan, as a fact, and the woman appears to accept herself as she is. Indeed, all the subjects in these paintings--mostly middle-aged women--projected an intriguing nonchalance about them- selves and their bodies.

Especially compelling were a pair of three-panel paintings. In one of them, Parlor Games a woman helps another try on a wedding dress, but more prominent than the women, who arc barely visible, is a big red chair in the nearly empty space. As with Peggy's House, which portrays a bare apartment. Parlor Games seems to be more about the relationship between space and objects than about those between human beings who are an apparent afterthought.

In effect, if not in style, these paintings are reminiscent of some of Edward Hopper's. They tantalize the viewer with the suggestion of a hidden narrative, which they, in turn, elaborate.

-Valerie Gladstone