Carlos Alfonzo’s new paintings are roisterous and roiling. They project their energy with a hyperkinetic force that can confound equilibrium. Like primal episodes, they appear self-created; they seem more like witnessed events than designed objects, their fecundity and ferocity barely contained at their borders.

Alfonzo’s primary gesture is a sweeping curved line whose trajectory loops into figure-eights, tightens into whorls, and arcs to intersect with other curves. Shift, 1987, is filled with pinwheeling vortices; in Image and Fact, 1989, sweeping segmented shapes resemble the rungs of black