1. Seth Becker at Venus Over Manhattan, through March 9.

Thirty-one small oil-on-panel paintings, often measuring less than twelve inches on any side, dot the walls of the gallery in A Boy’s Head, Seth Becker’s debut solo show in New York City. Each of the paintings here (all 2023)—featuring images of figures, animals and landscapes—captures a quiet moment. Several show artists at work; others imaginatively depict the dreams of animals and people. One features a whale sinking a ship; there are two portraits of Batman.

Paintings by the artist, who lives and works in Wappingers Falls, a small town south of Poughkeepsie, lend the gallery a sense of tranquility that can offer a welcome relief from the chaos of New York City. Each work also exerts a magnetic pull on viewers, drawing them near to examine the intricate brushstrokes that enliven the surfaces. One painting in particular, Bats, captured my imagination. Here, a pale moon hangs poised over a tree line, while a cauldron of bats flies across the sky, into the sunset. A haunting image, it could suggest a counterpoint to the turmoil in van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows (1890), the iconic painting that the Dutch artist completed just weeks before his death. But Becker’s work evokes the cathartic feeling of lying in a cold field, gazing skyward at the full moon. There is an understated eeriness to Becker’s painting: the dark silhouette of the tree line hints at the potential danger lurking within the shadows.

Perhaps the key to unraveling the work’s meaning—whether the image indicates fear or contemplation—can be found in another painting, Poet at Work. Here, a man sitting at a typewriter casts deep shadows on the wall beside him, while a fox perched at his desk turns to bark at him. The scene recalls Goya’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1799), prompting a meditation on the eternal struggle between logic and creativity that torments an artist in the creative act. Becker captures this conflict in a fresh way, presenting it as one between the resolve to create and the fear of what might be conjured.