For years, I’ve followed the work of Dov Harel Talpaz, and so was excited to see a large exhibition of his paintings (and a few collages and drawings) alongside the work of one of his closest friends, Chris Protas. Meeting as students at the NY Studio School, they formed a tight friendship, shared a studio for years, and influenced each other while also following their individual artistic journeys. I was curious how their close working and personal relationship would manifest itself in their work, and discovered, though on the surface appearing quite different, some shared intentions quietly exist too. With large shapes of intense carefully nuanced color, and nods to Matisse and Chagall, Dov creates visual poems of deep, poignantly emotional themes inspired by the Bible, music, literature, film, relationships with family and friends, and remembered landscapes from his Israeli homeland and adopted American northeast. Beginning with these external sources, his paintings transcend beyond, ultimately using color and form to create visual sounds of human connection, connection to each other, to music, to the eternal questions asked by mythology, literature, and the experience of the great outdoors. Chris Protas also has a strong sense of form, also begins from the particular while expanding to the universal, and also works from instinct, but Chris is interested in a quite different sense of the universal. Rather than delving inward for emotional metaphors, Chris looks outward, pointing to absurdities of the human condition, to the “what” and “why” we do what we do, to a coherent wackiness in the world. Having loved and absorbed comic books as a child, he now blends a kind of Mad-Magazine irreverent humor with stream-of-consciousness non-sequiturs that make sense when we suspend left-brain logic, and, housing these images in a post cubist constructed space, creates jumbled narratives that ask us to ask questions about ourselves and our society, about meaning, intention and interconnection. Curated by Michael Coleman, the exhibition hangs in a warm lived-in styled Tribeca loft that is the perfect backdrop to the very human art of these two artists. Up through May 6, the exhibition can be viewed at Loftis Studios by appointment only. If interested, email Michael Coleman at mike@secondavearts.com.