I recently saw Sophie von Hellerman’s solo show at Greene Naftali in Chelsea. There’s a side room where she painted all four walls with trees and greenery and filled the room with portraits, mostly of women, with what appeared to me the occasional reference to Picasso and Munch’s hand. I wasn’t familiar with her work before, and wasn’t ecstatic after, but I did enjoy the looseness of her brushwork and the thinness of her paint application, which resembled watercolor application but was actually oil. The other two rooms have literal depictions of idiomatic phrases such as “As the Crow Flies” and a green house painting/installation.
