Thomas Micchelli reviews paintings by Laura Sharp Wilson at McKenzie Fine Art, New York, on view through May 4, 2014.

Micchelli writes: "Irresistibly baffling, Laura Sharp Wilson’s paintings ensnare us inside a post-industrial jungle of tangled cables and serpentine vines, blinding yellow days and blacker than black nights. Her crisply articulated forms thrust, loop, spiral, dangle, cluster, zigzag, and coil edge-to-edge with a singular clarity that sidesteps chaos for a state of wide-eyed delirium… These images overflow with unabashed sumptuousness, their straight-ahead graphic punch swapping out Pop’s irony to underscore its immediacy. The clean colors, acute contrasts and sharp contours lay claim to comic books’ borrowings from Expressionist and Japanese art, rechanneling them into painting without stumbling into high seriousness."