VENICE

There are lots of double tracking and fancy footwork in paintings by Colin Lee. Straddling the line between figuration and abstraction, this New York new wave painter loads his pictures with so many conflicting signifiers that his intentions remain a mystery. His visual vocabulary matches the pop culture shorthand that’s second nature to the TV generation, with references so personal they’re virtually impossible to decode.

Rooted in labyrinthine, insular thinking, Lee’s art is often about art (novel idea, that), and we find him tipping his hat to Francis Picabia and Anselm Kiefer among others. A particularly intriguing number, titled “Bob Fosse,” depicts a troupe of dancers sitting around a rehearsal hall and is simultaneously evocative of Degas and LeRoy Neiman. Lee’s paintings are frequently at war with themselves.

Thematically, his pictures spin on the axis of their own very private concerns, but the physical surface of the work reaches out to press the flesh of the viewer. Lee is a consistently superior technician and he paints with a juicy, intensely emotional touch that’s as seductive and deceptive as a warm, smiling face that ultimately reveals nothing. (Piezo Electric, 21 Market St., to July 20.)