Jonathan Griffin reviews the exhibition Joe Goode: Flat Screen Nature at Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, on view through August 29, 2014.

Griffin writes: "Most of these paintings are only cursorily representational: they typically consist of one horizontal four-by-eight foot panel, painted dark blue, beneath another horizontal panel painted a lighter blue. The seam where the two rectangles meet is the dead level horizon… Behind the poker-face, Goode is a deft and sensuous painter. Even the simplest paintings here … achieve in their brushed surfaces infinite degrees of nuance and depth… these paintings really aren’t about sea and sky. They are about their ontological status as objects that attempt – and fail – to capture a particular archetype of pristine natural perfection."