The Comet and the Hourglass: Theodora Allen at Blum & Poe

Moments after I stepped into Blum & Poe, where Theodora Allen’s recent paintings are hanging, a woman entered and declared to her companion, “These are so pleasing.” Allen’s works do, indeed, give immediately and generously of their visual splendor. They deftly marry ostensibly opposing formal qualities—flatness and depth, extravagance and restraint, presence and absence—eliciting not only sensual pleasure but also an intellectual rush.
“Syzygy&rdquo