Kitty Caparella reviews works by Ken Kewley at Gross-McLeaf Gallery, Philadelphia, on view through February 26, 2016.

Caparella writes that in these recent works Kewley "uses the spirograph, a fancy name for the plastic geometric stencil, to make circles, stars, and curves. It’s a device used by architects and children alike… In 'Large Still Life I,' a 24-inch square painting, what appear to be flowers sit on a table near a window with a tree on a clear day, yet patches of color represent the floor, walls and table legs —all vertical. The foreground image is a bricolage of shapes so chaotic and colorful it creates a stormy center for which the dark, flat, Matisse-like tilted floor and Byzantine patterning in the background is the calm."