Jonathan Faber’s Idle moves deftly from the large to the small. Juxtaposing obscure imagery against sharper details, Faber allows the past to grow hazy in paintings of overgrown landscapes and ambiguous structures. Yet he also includes works filled with distinct shapes and colors, celebrating the poignant moments that exist within the confines of those now less distinct memories.

The show’s eponymous painting hangs alongside another large painting titled Blind Spot. Both paintings reveal natural settings with remote structures falling into neglect and disrepair. In Idle, a wall of trees veils a building in the background. An empty countryside frames bright flecks of orange and purple; these are the only indications of movement in an otherwise still scene. The imagery in Blind Spot draws from Faber’s childhood on the East Coast and the inevitable transformation those places and resonances underwent over the years. In Blind Spot, physical totems dissolve while emotive occurrences remain vivid. Unlike these larger paintings that depict broad and indistinct landscapes, Faber’s smaller works showcase the intricacies of his subject matter and his artistic style. Largely comprised of vibrant geometric shapes with shifting and turbulent backgrounds, Faber’s brushstrokes indicate that he revisited these smaller works many times over the course of their development, drawing attention to the jumbled process of reconstructing memories.

Trans Muted, a small oil on canvas, strikes a balance with the adjacent Blind Spot (both paintings hang on the gallery’s south wall). Black diamonds with gray striping against a multi-hued background decorate Trans Muted while Blind Spot represents a home sinking into its immediate surroundings, as though the house is returning to a state of inactivity. In Trans Muted, the former vitality that Blind Spot represents is brought to life once again. The content of Blind Spot carries over into Trans Muted and magnifies the narrative of personal experience. Together the works introduce a complex idea—the recollection process as warped by time and sentimentality—and then focus it acutely on the memory’s specificities. The pairing highlights both ends of Idle’s spectrum between the obtuse and acute. Though Blind Spot and Trans Muted rely upon one another, they also engage independently of their relationship. It is within this duality that Faber excels.

As Faber shifts between the recognizable and the vague, some components appear less well integrated.  A yellow and red hued painting titled Scully b stands awkwardly against the darker palette of the show’s other paintings. It comes across as a muted expression of the transitory sentiments successfully conveyed in Faber’s other paintings. Likewise, High on Fire #2, a departure from Faber’s traditional oil on canvas, feels too formal for the otherwise dreamy allure of the exhibition. As one of two framed oil pastel works in ldle, High on Fire #2 takes no cues from the other works and seems adrift as a misplaced, albeit beautiful, addition to the show.

Idle elicits an ethereal retreat into the past, sometimes for better and occasionally for worse. The cathartic joy of reminiscing is at times abruptly forced to meet the present by Faber’s inclusion of works which appear as after-thoughts. These momentary interruptions detract from the cadence of Idle and undermine Faber’s otherwise captivating display of collective nostalgia.