Clintel Steed’s powerful new paintings are among the best works on view at this year’s youthful, bustling – and very fun – Bridge Art Fair. Grouped generously in Mark Borghi’s gallery space, Steed’s large canvasses are a perfect fit for the setting; arresting and sustaining as they do even the most restless of gazes. With strong color, decisive brushstrokes and exuberant frame-pushing compositions, Steed unfolds complex scenes taken mainly from his own surroundings. Frontal-Pass andTriple Play are especially eye-catching, and depict, among the miscellany of the studio, computers set to show internet porn. The handling of the images on the screens is deftly energetic, both pixilated and painterly, but no more interesting than the rest of the paintings which exhibit expertly maneuvered passages of mud-tones slipping thickly into bright hues, and structural expanses of pink taking on blush-inducing figurative presences. The works suggest the instincts and intellect of a painter who thrives on visual overstimulation, and for whom all forms of seeing can be a bit of a turn-on.

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