JJ Manford creates utopias. But they are familiar utopias. You recognize where they are and where they want to be; the mid-century modern furniture, the art on the walls, the pop-cultural references, they all are part of a universal understanding of interiors and the beauty of light and photography. The oil stick style gives them a hazy, dreamlike quality, which again fits into this sort of familiar utopian vision. Light and dreams. V1 Gallery notes of Manford's work that "There is a sense of spring and summer, new beginnings, longing and contemplative hope in many of the thirteen new paintings in the Fifth Season." And maybe after writing about Manford so often over the last few years I have missed, this dream of something renewed. Maybe the light in the works isn't the end of a dream but a beginning of a new memory? —Evan Pricco