Provocation by way of beauty might be a fitting way to describe Per Kirkeby’s paintings of the ’90s. This recent exhibition consisted of 19 tantalizing canvases, each radiating a dark, almost subterranean energy—with gray and purple areas of clay, mud, and gravel; glowing belts of ore and burning lava; and green and bright-blue streams. Kirkeby, a trained geologist, has transformed science into art, to splendid, almost unnerving effect.

One could detect in Kirkeby’s previous work a desire to explore the places where nature and culture intersect. Each canvas was a semiotic battlefield—fragments