Sophie von Hellermann: Greene Naftali Gallery.(New York)

For a show that took its cues from Albert Einstein, German painter Sophie von Hellermann's first solo exhibition in New York wore its mantle lightly. Staged on the occasion of the hundred-year anniversary of the watershed formulation of E=[mc.sup.2], "Goddess in the Doorway" exuded a gravity that, for all its pretense to science, was really more about waking dreams and kinesthetic apparitions than postulated equations.

In von Hellermann's large-scale, candy-color acrylics, figures hover unmoored against unprimed canvas, the paint alternately seeping into the weave of the ...

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