Tom Burckhardt at Gregory Lind Gallery

For his latest showing, Cast Paintings, Tom Burckhardt cast his canvases and supports first, hung them up as “legitimate” paintings, and then painted them. This idea of a false start, embedded in the canvas itself, supports the modernist style of the works at hand. The results can be quite potent, as in “Sneakers,” with its strong directions and colors; humorous and surreal, as in “Public Sculpture;” and, expressive, as in “Flayed Front,” which leaves one with the longing to fill in the gaps. But it is the overall unifying quality of abstraction and a pleasant unevenness to the surfaces that keep the viewer thinking and re-considering.

Tom Burckhardt, Cast Paintings, Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco,through 15 February 2014.