Sharon Butler blogs about exhibitions by Mario Naves and Brett Baker at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York, on view through February 2, 2013.

Butler writes that Naves' "buoyant compositional strategies recall those of his earlier collages, but the smoothly painted, unified surfaces and saturated color of his new work evoke the Indian and Persian miniatures and the 16th-century Netherlandish paintings that [he] considers touchstones." She continues noting that "Baker's paintings are darker and more obsessive than Naves, and they suggest that he is entertaining a philosophical question, trying to convince himself that, despite all practical evidence to the contrary, meaning resides in the process. And so he continues–we all do."