The paintings of Sharon Horvath, up now through Feb. 24 at Lori Bookstein, are cosmic jewels that shine with a yin/yang spirit of the wholistic whole of opposites. Composed of paint, polymers, costume jewelry and other keepsakes, the materials themselves speak of multilayered contradictions: the intangible qualities of paint and physicality of objects, the spatial illusions possible with flat paint and the 3-dimensionality of built-up painted protrusions, the singular utility of actual things and the infinite metaphors they might suggest, and ultimately, the intersections between metaphysics and physics. As a practicing Tibetan Buddhist, Horvarth brings to her paintings the concepts of impermanence and timelessness, while creating very here-and-now objects of beauty and meditation. Some paintings read as altars or mandalas to the spirit gods, some as reflections of our galaxy above or her garden below, and some as outgrowths of her inner world, but all have a fluidity of movement within which her collaged elements, conceptually and texturally quite different from each other, connect both visually and contextually through dreamlike dialogues that move through the artworks’ rhythmic structures. Horvarth’s paintings, which suggest the transitory passings of life and nature’s rejuvenating growth, ask us to smile, be bedazzled, and seriously contemplate the illogical musings of our imagination, and the equally illogical realities of our time.