Better known as the guiding force behind the Sub-basement Artists Studios, Jeffrey Kent dropped a land mine of a show on the Creative Alliance earlier this year, and its imagery still has the power to disrupt sleep. His first solo show in the city since 2005, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly spotlighted a whopping array of Kent's paintings, from his more freely street art-inspired graffiti panels to his comic-book re-imaginations, and each tackled the barely bottled volatility of masculinity with an unflinching eye. Kent's combination of muscular painting and nakedly vulnerable backward text involved the eye and stirred the soul, and sometimes the knee-knocking power of this combination didn't fully land until days and weeks after drinking in his intense imagery.
