"Any and Every Day" by J, Phoenix

It takes a deft hand to find the right shade of subtlety. Too little, and the viewer sees only lifeless, pointless gray. Too much and the true story is lost in a predictable Oreo cookie of black and white. The Academy Award winning film, Crash, for example, served up enough Oreos to feed the entire public school system in New York City for a month. Woah! In short, subtlety is a weapon, but only in the right hands. Hands like abstract upstart, J. What appears to be a standard mother-and-son-smiling-in-the-sun piece (yawn) begs for a closer look. And then the clues begin to surface like bubbles in a gassy toddler’s bath; the transparent dress, the codpiece on the balding youngster, the sparse, struggling vegetation and finally, ultimately, the exploding sun. Everything we know and love today, suggests J, can be turned upside down tomorrow. A bleak worldview for such a precocious young mind? Perhaps. But Academy Awards have been doled out for far less.