Apple seeds and the parted pages of books, fleshy fingers and bald heads are among the symbols Alexi Worth uses to conjure a sometimes sinister sexuality. In “Head and Shoulders,” the wrinkle of a head on a woman’s shoulder looks more like bare labia than an embrace. And a cut apple, held up by an eager hand, bears it core like sex. Flat as they may be, Worth’s images aren’t necessarily impenetrable. In some, with a shadow cast across the canvas and or the blatant image of “The Enabler” holding a video camera, Worth makes the viewer a participant. This is especially so in his 2006 painting “Rag & Palette,” where an ominous shadow makes the viewer acutely aware of witnessing a moment that neither of the two subjects, their eyes averted, wish to acknowledge. –Julie Greicius
