Ken Johnson reviews an exhibition of paintings by Cary Smith at Fredericks & Freiser, New York, on view through January 9, 2016.

Johnson writes that "[Smith's] works don’t aim to deflate Modernist art à la Sherrie Levine and others of the Neo-Geo trend of the 1980s. There’s a sense, rather, of personally expressive import to his paintings, most evident in those where blobby shapes radiate from straight-edged geometric forms, like flowers growing out of eccentric pots, as in “Painted Splat #4 (pale blue — yellow with color block).” Cool formal order contains a warm spirit of expansive exuberance."