The Stranger

All of Soly Cissé’s juicy, confident, expressionistic paintings begin with a black background. Growing up in Dakar, Senegal, his father was a doctor, and the young artist made his first paintings by attempting to “fix” the broken bones he saw in the dark X-ray films. Later, his teachers told him the rules—including that certain colors were not African, particularly pink. Pink, you’ll notice, is a dominant color in his work. Lost Worlds, his first exhibition in the United States, is an arresting array of humans intermingling with other animals against backgrounds of hectic color, graffiti-like text, and esoteric numerical codes. (M.I.A Gallery, 1203A Second Ave, www.m-i-a-gallery.com, 10:30 am–5:30 pm, free) by Jen Graves

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