Jean-Baptiste Bouvier, and Brent Ridge both explore image-based abstraction and foreground process as a way to create art that subverts conclusion. Ridge’s paintings feature oxidized memories of curiously empty places reminiscent of the empty industrial buildings that populate Detroit nearby his hometown of Flint, Michigan. With an almost invisible hand and sensitivity to light and shadow Ridge reveals recognizable objects reflected in watery pools of paint.

A lock on a security gate or two birds nestling together are vessels of abstraction forever relegated to a lost past or an unrealized future. Although the subject matter of Bouvier’s work ranges from still life to figures to landscapes, the pieces are connected by an overall desire to picture life in all its natural and artificial glory. In this show, small paintings are rendered with a melancholy detachment: a silhouetted still life of black flowers with ominous abstract geometry floats against a warm reflective background. Bouvier’s work shifts between popular culture and historical references; he cheats interpretation in the name of beauty and in the process offers an inconclusive truth.