Roberta Smith reviews paintings by Gianna Commito at Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, on view through February 22, 2015.

Smith writes: "The effect is of looking into a broken kaleidoscope, its elements askew in a shallow space. Sense cannot be made of this carefully worked out confusion and the shadowy hall-of-mirrors puzzles it creates, but the modest scale keeps the eye engaged, on intimate terms. And each painting seems to have a different spatial conundrum, a different array of entrances and blockages, which is no mean trick. An engaging confusion of historical references adds to the works’ pleasures. Ms. Commito paints with casein, which creates a suitably dry, matte surface for her fresco palette. Formally, she builds on the legacies of Cubism and Precisionism, bringing them into the present with perhaps unconscious help from the layered geometric figures of Jacob Lawrence and early Philip Guston…"