Elliott Green | snapSHOT of the art world

David Ebony's Top 10 / NYC Spring

7.) Elliott Green at Miles McEnery, through April 23.

The hallucinogenic, quasi-illusionistic landscapes/dreamscapes that Elliott Green introduced in his work several years ago have reached their apotheosis in this dazzling show of mostly large-scale paintings. A Detroit native who lives and works in upstate New York, in the mid-Hudson Valley, Green uses various comb-like tools to achieve the moiré effects, and the sensation of undulating surfaces, air currents, and rhymical structures that is a prominent attribute of his recent work.

Many of the paintings here are epic in scale and thematic range, hinting at issues of climate change and the fragility of nature. One outstanding example, Ballistic Mist (2021), depicts a rocky landscape at left surrounded by billowing waves of a turbulent sea in the foreground. A blue mushroom cloud at far right soars into the sky, morphing with an exploding gray mass at center right in the far distance to threaten this would-be island paradise.