Mike Kelley, Untitled 2 (Detail), 2008–2009

What exactly is going on here? Who knows, but what a brilliant image—a Paddington Bear hat, books and a woman who seems bafflingly content considering her peculiar physiology. This painting by Mike Kelley is typical of his wry convergence of high and low culture, and yesterday it went on show as part of the artist’s solo exhibition Timeless Painting at Hauser & Wirth in New York. Untitled 2 is from the Horizontal Tracking Shots series of fourteen pieces, which see biomorphically shaped paintings attached to large polychrome panels. These are shown alongside works from a fifteen year period between 1994 and 2009 that aim to showcase the “breadth of the artist’s engagement with the medium of painting”, according to the gallery. The show runs until  25 January 2020.