The Chicago-born painter Keegan Monaghan is interested in the quandaries of perception. Whether his works are large or small, all are products of optical experimentation. The largest work in this exhibition, Clouds, depicts a huge crowd of people as hundreds of heads seen from afar—myriad rough dabs of color that coalesce into a field of light and shadow. Half as big as Clouds, the painting Peas is also a cluster of repeated shapes; yet this time, the field is close-cropped and the peas are huge. Monaghan’s studies suggest that distance and detail can convey the same visual effects. —E.C.