Daniel Gerwin reviews Steve DiBenedetto: Novelty Mapping Picnic at Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles, on view through March 4, 2017.

Gerwin writes: “‘Influx’ (2016) is my favorite piece — a little carnival of a painting whose stunning relationships of hot pinks, acrid greens, and chilly yellows has such a mystifying surface that even after DiBenedetto told me how he made it, I couldn’t really understand its construction. It looks like a hallucinatory experience of a county fair, with suggestions of blinking lights, roller-coasters, and the Ferris wheel that the artist has used as a frequent symbol in the past.”