Paintings and watercolors from the late Stephen Mueller’s last half-decade are the subject of a touching, exquisite show at Lennon, Weinberg. Reveling in dichotomies that typified this artist, these masterful compositions are at once sumptuous and ethereal, subtle and exuberant, cosmic and decorative. Mueller, who died last year at 64 after a short battle with lung cancer, would typically float mandala shapes amidst audacious plaids, achieving a kind of tantric gaiety that could collapse the boundaries between kitsch and the sublime. There is a certain delicious irony, meanwhile, in a gallery turning itself around from the miseries of flooding to reopen a show whose works on paper celebrate the controlled chaos of water, the delicate resonance of stain. DAVID COHEN
Stephen Mueller, Untitled (NYC-4), 2009. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 13 x 13 inches. Courtesy of Lennon, Weinberg, Inc.
On view through December 22 at 514 West 25th Street, between 10th and 11th avenues, New York City, 212 941 0012