Jonathan Kamholtz reviews the exhibition Continuity and Change: The Return to Figurative Painting, curated by Daniel Brown, on view at Cininnati Art Galleries through June 8, 2013. The show features works by Linda E. Anderson, Rob Anderson, Brian Burt, Tim Kennedy, Eve Mansdorf, Emil Robinson, and Aidan Schapera.

Kamholtz writes that he is "interested in some of the ways that the paintings resist… conventions of narration, virtually erasing the past and often making it hard for the viewers to know just what their relationship to the paintings’ subjects ought to be. They remind me of tableaux, a popular nineteenth century genre in which fully dimensional characters coalesce into positions that sum up in frozen elegance both the actors and the action, the way Sondheim imagines the population of Seurat’s 'La Grande Jatte' finally agreeing to take up their positions on the stage as they are on the canvas. This might help shift some of the emphasis from the element of narration to the strange phenomenon that is the pose. And it’s interesting how much posing for a picture—or being depicted as if posing—moves the human condition closer to that of a statue."