Last Chance

Catch it or Regret It

by Holly Otterbein

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Naive American Art

While Jason Sho Green's paintings are only occasionally sexy, they are always sexual. Take "Golden Girls," for instance, in which busty, curled-up blondes are stacked on top of each other in physically impossible positions — like M.C. Escher's stairs, but dirtier. Sexual, yes, but not sexy. Likewise, in "Milked and Cookied," a Playboy bunny has three breasts on her chest, two tits where her eyes should be and one boob where her mouth is, and she's straddling an anything-but-freaked-out man.

Rendered in a comic, freehand style, Green’s works are more than just representations of the horny straight male’s mind — they capture the naughty thoughts of gays, women and animals, too. Taking obvious cues from Mark Chamberlain, "How to Make a Pencil Disappear" shows a gay Batman — except he’s gay for another Batman, instead of Robin. Other works show a brunette rubbing down a manticore, and a red fox wrapped sensually around a woman’s neck (pictured).

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The weirdest part about all the boobs and humping and bestiality is that Green claims he’s more inspired by his childhood in Japan than anything. "There's something about being a curious kid in a land where you don’t understand the language … you take in all the visuals and are forced to create your own story," he says. I ask Green if he can reconcile his two inspirations, perhaps with the help of Freud. "Maybe they're slightly weighted toward sexual subjects because I drew a lot of these in the middle of the night,” he says. "Or maybe I’m just a bit of a perv."

This group show highlights and personifies animals, like Green, but in a significantly less libidinous way. My favorites are Anne Canfield’s sketches and oil paintings, which place larger-than-life, menacing cats near desolate, unreal-looking buildings.

  Henrietta and Reinhold, an artsy power couple from Mount Airy, are nothing alike — at least when it comes to preferred mediums. Her sculptures are blocky, simplistic portrayals of the human figure, and his paintings are lilting, abstract works that rely heavily on bold colors. Still, they fit together well — kind of like Batman and Robin.

Still can't make it? To see images from these exhibits, go to citypaper.net/agenda.