Contributed by Jacob Patrick Brooks / It would be hard to miss the overarching theme of Lydia Baker’s show “Sonnet,” up at Massey Klein Gallery: metamorphosis. But rather than relying on overused signifiers, she gently guides us through life’s whitewater rapids, her work practically whispering “the only constant is change.” The paintings and drawings resist a linear narrative but plainly embody a story. Her world is ethereal, physics and biology unsettled within it. The protagonists are gloopy, like heavy gas trapped in a plasmodic figure, depicted in vibrating splotches of layered color. Baker is a color and tone expert; nothing is out of place, and everything is on purpose. Paint is applied carefully and dryly to render watery paintings like Daughters and Cells Flying Side by Side and A Pool of Our Hopes and Dreams, creating an interesting tension between material and content.
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