Surveying the flotsam and jetsam of his own daily life, British painter James White catalogues objects that occupy interstitial space, the remnants of activity or the harbingers of things to come. In the painting cycle “The Rough with the Smooth” (all works 2008) and the series “Relationships,” White demonstrates sensitivity to the ways in which functional artifacts assume a fuzzy symbolism when looked at with a certain rigor (his rendering is close to Photorealist) and with a certain intensity (in this case, cool but exacting).

The arrangements of “The Rough with the Smooth” look convincingly

Perhaps the most unlikely thing about Patrick Hill’s recent work is the fact that someone like Hill made it. Sternly elegant forms and somber opulence seem improbable for a former surfer dude; hence the frequent reference, in the titles of some of his previous paintings and in articles written about the artist, to Hill’s brain tumor (discovered and subsequently removed in 2001)—as though this biographical nugget could account for either the sculptor’s avid formalism or his tendency to sully it with organic and abject substances. Cancer appears to complicate the surfer stereotype in just the way