Review

"Cherry," Oil on Canvas.

Allan Chow
Summer Garden

Noon-10:30 p.m.

Blue Koi
1803 W. 39th St.
Kansas City, MO
816.561.5003

Hours: 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Friday, noon-10:30 p.m. Saturday
Runs through: April 30.

Artist's sites: http://www.allanchow.com
http://liveandcreate.blogspot.com
Gallery site: http://www.bluekoi.net

In the world of food, it's awfully hard to beat simplicity, freshness and careful preparation. And when edibles become the subject of visual art, the same things hold true.

Allan Chow's Summer Garden series of oil paintings, making its debut this month at the 39th Street location of Blue Koi, follows a simple and straightforward theme. Chow, usually known for land- and seascapes,  is working on a much smaller scale this time around.

He offers flawless, oversized, richly textured fruits and flowers, presented one to a canvas against clean (but also texture-intensive, thanks to his trademark palette-knife work) backgrounds. Placed as they are, on the left-hand wall in the restaurant's entryway, Chow's paintings provide a bright and bracing first course for the eyes even before diners take their seats.

The lush curves of skin (as typified in Cherry, pictured above) and petal add yet another dimension to the visual flavor profile: a layer of sensuality that ties in perfectly with the seductive aspects of food-sharing.

I just love how the theme goes so well in restaurants, especially at one of my favorites in town, Chow writes. My goal is to travel all over town the rest of this year exhibiting these series of paintings.

To that end, the next stop on the tour will be at ARTichokes in Leawood's Mission Farms development. The Summer Garden works go on display there next month ... and as convenience would have it, there's a Blue Koi location in Mission Farms as well, enabling those who love Chow's bold, sun-drenched paintings and the restaurant's noodles and dumplings to get both fixes in virtually one stop.

Nothing wrong with combining simple pleasures, after all ...

-re-

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