ELLIOTT GREEN | THE NEW YORK TIMES

ELLIOTT GREEN: ‘HUMAN NATURE’ at Pierogi.

In his first New York solo since 2009, Mr. Green unveils the tumultuous baroque landscapes that have evolved from the painterly cartoon figures that once inhabited his canvases. They are full of geological action and meteorological exuberance. Mountains jut, glaciers pour into the sea, tectonic plates collide, hills roll, lava burns. (Above, “Human Nature,” an oil-on-linen painting from this year.) And throughout, all kinds of brushes and tools enable an entire palette’s worth of colors to flow, stutter, twist, suffuse and fold, while freehand additions à la de Kooning — and Mr. Green’s earlier work, as well — occasionally flit about. Painters of the American West like Thomas Moran are updated. Extreme artifice prevails with photography and animation lurking just offstage. And the subterranean subtext rears its ugly head: human nature’s ignorant abuse of nature nature.

— Roberta Smith