ART IN REVIEW, New York Times, September 12, 2008
By Ken Johnson

Baker Overstreet
Follies
Fredericks & Freiser

With the vibrant, abstract paintings in his second New York solo show, Baker Overstreet continues to pursue a kind of faux-primitive visionary mode associated with painters like Alfred Jensen and Forest Bess. Previous works by Mr. Overstreet, the recent recipient of a Yale master of fine arts degree, featured symmetrical, curvilinear motifs suggestive of tribal art. The new paintings are also symmetrical and busily patterned, but the compositions are more geometric and architectural. They seem at once archaic and futuristic, like designs for New Age altars. Painted in bright colors on black grounds, they also have the garish luminosity of video-game screens and Las Vegas casino signs.

Mr. Overstreet paints with a brusque, unfussy touch, but the built-up surfaces of his canvases show that he does a lot of painting and repainting before arriving at the final image. His pictures look as though they were made by an obsessive or autistic outsider trying to recreate a divine revelation. It is not clear, however, whether Mr. Overstreet's images actually mean anything. Teetering tantalizingly between the numinous and the decorative, they make you wonder what he'll do next.