The Boston Phoenix, May 26, 2000

"Newbury ramble/Gallery goodies for late spring"

(caption) Increasingly geometric: Ann Christensen's "Rollin'" (2000), at MPG

Ann Christensen, "Passionate Landscape" at MPG (285 Newbury Street), through June 11. It was, I confess, with some trepidation that I looked into Michael Price's gallery (hence the MPG) for Ann Christensen's second major show. Having seen and written extensively about Christensen's bright, daringly simple - all right, passionate - landscapes in the past, I couldn't imagine how she'd move on. How do you improve on passionate?

Kinky, apparently. Christensen's latest work draws on various aspects of her signature style - large swaths of primary colors, vistas rendered nearly abstract for their often startling austerity - to create stranger, sometimes blindingly bright, increasingly geometric forms. The river bed that once snaked through its terrain now cuts its embankment in a zigzag of right angles; fields that formerly glowed with sunlight now look as if they'd just been hit by a meteor. The ostensible calm of Christensen's panoramas gradually suggest a veneer beneath which pressures of hydraulic intensity build. The hills don't look like worn mountains so much as incipient eruptions; the sky at first looks clear and blue, but it's bolted to the horizon, as if it too could blow away.

A word of caution: display is not among MPG's strengths, so if you decide the best work is the piece in the window, remember that it's the one you got to see from the greatest distance. The others are stunning too, but you have to work to see them.

by Christopher Millis