In this show, Thomas Trosch takes a hiatus from his big, densely brushed paintings of cartoonish society figures. He offers instead painting-size collages compiled from what would appear to be his source materials: images cut from 1950's issues of Town & Country and Vogue, found odds and ends (buttons, brocaded handkerchiefs, seashells), and judiciously deployed art-historical references.
Fashion and vacation are the primary themes. ''Embarkation for St. Helena,'' for example, incorporates a magazine ad of a honeymoon limo, a detail of Watteau's ''Embarkation for Cythera,'' a map of Florida and a hotel beach towel emblazoned with the words ''Sun hats cover pincurls neatly.'' Another piece, ''Making Spring and Summer Dresses,'' includes clips of smiling models, flower arrangements, a generous selection of ornamental buttons and, to clinch the link between decoration and art, a reproduction of a Pollock painting.
Mr. Trosch's art references have revealing things to say about his own work: his penchant for layering and manipulated textures and colors really does relate to the Philip Guston abstraction that makes an appearance here. But where Guston was moody and introspective, Mr. Trosch seem determinedly and wittily upbeat. Each collage suggests both a personal scrapbook and a cultural time capsule: the enthusiastic response, say, of a fashion-besotted, nostalgia-imbibing and prodigiously gifted adolescent, to a moment in time he had just missed experiencing firsthand. HOLLAND COTTER