In Emily Mae Smith’s solo exhibition, Heretic Lace, on view at Petzel Gallery in New York, the pensive figures in the artist’s staggering and ominous paintings, who often take the form of humanoid brooms (descendants of the sweeper in Disney’s Fantasia, 1940), are trapped, blood on hands, in the rattling cage of art historical motifs. They look out over the horizon, expressionless, faceless, against a large moon or the amber hued glow of a window, with their bristled limbs in entropic environs. Flowers slightly wilted, a woodpecker gnashing at the timber, carnivorous felines, and hordes of mice invade the grain. As startlingly beautiful as they are, the paintings in Heretic Lace take on darker, psychosexual overtones (as compared to Smith’s past forays into the syntax of pop)—a distant famine, the memory of plagues and the torment of the artist in a zeitgeist at war with itself and haunted by the memories of the past. Formalities contradict themselves like brilliant paradoxes of form and perspective. There is a twisted surrealism that begs you to sweep all your nightmares under the rug.

Emily Mae Smith “Heretic Lace” is on view at Petzel Gallery until November 12th. All artwork courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York