The paintings of Max Jansons are deceptively ornate, whether overtly in the luxuriant bouquet works or more obliquely in the abstract color studies and Pop-style compositions. Folk art, art nouveau, ornamental cubism, and candy-colored, retro design are some of the references Jansons work recombines, creating thematic groups of paintings that elaborate upon one another. The abstract works have certain repeating motifs like the triangle, which is used either as a central image or in multiples within a canvas. The abstracts that depart from the triangle imagery have a sort of technicolor Cubism — dynamic geometric arrangements of color and pattern. There is variation in painting approach both between works and within single compositions. Impasto strokes are used within the boundaries of flat design, as in textured strokes inside a sharply delineated vine leaf, a segment of striped triangle, or the vase in a still life. Selected works at first appear to have the smooth surface of slick Pop, but instead have visible strokes that follow the forms, amplifying an element or thickening of an individual detail. These works also play with transparency and color layering, with subtle tonal changes. Joseph Albers-style formalist color experiments applied to habitual subject matter is a humorous proposition that suggests Jansons’ work may have an element of satire. This mode of the Pop- absurd can be located in the abstract and floral works which may have a valence of ironic pastiche, as if to say, ”You want pretty? You want décor?” Warhol was a master of this provocation, screen printing flowers to anticipate the demand for pleasing imagery or taking the banal, likable genre of pastoral landscape and turning it into cow wallpaper, a wry send-up of the middle- brow taste for bucolic, rustic nostalgia. To give Jansons credit for having a contemporary, conceptual perspective would be to see the possibility of critique within the beautiful flowers, and approachable abstracts. Jansons paints with great attention to surface, form, and color, embedding this observant exploration of his medium within frolicsome pictures of harmony and bounty. These agreeable pictures may harbor a charismatic wit that asks the viewer to consider if they have to like what they see.