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In the Galleries - Light / Dark

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By Jessica Baran, Riverfront Times, June 27, 2013

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St. Louis-based painter Soledad Van Emden memorializes the drive-by interstices of darkness under local highway overpasses in this collection of small works of unlikely depth. Everyday commuter cross points with Interstate 55, Highway 40, Lombard Street and Broadway are depicted with dramatic clarity, as shadowy bridges and archways appear like intricately patterned scrims through which yawn bright, paved expanses. These intimate, straightforward oil paintings lack sentimental flourishes and consider their subjects as they appear: all-but-invisible moments in the urban landscape, whose structural irresolution renders them oddly mysterious.