Opening Reception, Stephen Thorpe: “Who Looks Outside, Dreams; Who Looks Inside, Awakes”

CRITIC’S PICK: A graduate of the illustrious Royal College of Art in London and a former Professor of Painting at the Savannah College of Art & Design, Thorpe paints interiors that are informed by an ongoing interest in architecture, psychoanalysis and cultural archetypes, curators say. According to Artsy, paintings by the artist can command prices of up to $30,000. “The textiles and decorative motifs that appear in this British painter’s colorful, often clamorously beautiful depictions of interiors are drawn from a multitude of cultural traditions,” Johanna Fateman wrote in The New Yorker. “But although these design elements evoke far-flung origins — and the colonial histories that attend them — Thorpe seems most concerned with the cumulative power of ornament to conjure a syncretic, escapist reality.” — Kevin C. Madigan