Like ruins from some future archaeological dig, James Hyde’s nonrepresentational “frescoes” on large chunks of Styrofoam give suggestive shape to the fleeting landscape of the present. Unlike much theory-fueled abstract painting, Hyde’s works are at once elusive and materialist, playful and rigorous. They manage to carve out a paradoxical place for themselves by letting the present slip silently away, but not without surreptitiously exerting a slight spin on its invisible trajectory.

Hyde’s paintings work in the space between memory and experience. As ungraspable recollections or fluid distortions,

Thomas Trosch is an amusing, playful painter whose work could easily be dismissed as idiotic, as the farthest thing possible from serious painting. Remember Philip Guston, whose audience said, “See ya Phil,” the minute a figure stepped onto his buttery abstractions and rerouted his career. Fans and practitioners of “pure painting” get hives if they see a recognizable form—or even worse, text. Reading words on this precious surface destroys the potential for a voyage to the bottom of the sublime. By contrast, Trosch kind of paints like a baby. The paintings look like they’ve had a tantrum. In