FOR 7/11 FENN GALLERY, ANDREW CHIN SOCIAL COMMENTARY IN POP ART TRADITION

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WOODBURY, CONN. — Fenn Gallery features the witty, comic-style paintings of Andrew Chin through August 3. There will be an artist’s reception on Saturday, July 15, 4 to 6 pm at the gallery, 345 Main Street South.

In the Pop Art tradition, Chin paints highly stylized, colorful and humorous pictures of ostensibly unexceptional human artifacts. The stuffed toys, food objects, cigars and signature chopsticks that populate his canvases are quite exceptional in that every object is trimmed with short eyelashlike brushstrokes. The delicate hairlike lines serve to both intrigue and entertain, and create a visual tension between the objects and the solid color grounds.

A lit cigar cradled in chopsticks seemingly converses with a cucumber smoking a cigarette in a 4-by-11-foot painting titled “A Conversation Between Two Dissidents.” In “Crime and Punishment,” four lit cigarettes held by unseen protagonists in the foreground take aim at a cluster of melting icicles looming overhead.

While Chin’s cast of characters are readily playful and witty, his quirky scenarios are certainly intended to be socially provocative as well. Under all that hair looms subtle commentary on such contemporary issues as immigration, global warming and societal oppression.

Andrew Chin lives in New York, and his work was most recently reviewed in Art In America.

The Fenn Gallery is open Thursday – Sunday, noon to 5 pm. For information, 203-263-3449 or www.fenngallery.com.