John Obuck is full of tricks. Formal jugglings create optical illusions and recombine geometrics in a way that compositional transformations sometimes seem to be puns on the painter’s own elements. However, these figure/ ground deceptions and distortions do not seem contrived, for Obuck’s esthetic legerdemains also seem irrational as though the products of lucky accidents. The overall effect is dual: orderly, because of consistent, crisp, black figures on white fields; confusing, because these figures function as both problems and solutions.

Obuck constructs paintings and paints small constructions.