The positions of the three women in the show's titular painting project different sorts of distraction: on a subway car, a woman applies make-up, another pulls an item from her purse, and a third is using a smart phone or some other adult busy box. The position of the women's legs conveys meaning. Without projecting a false depth, Ms. Kress attributes to her subjects a resting disconnection from the present subway car. Her skill at using body language to convey meaning reminds us that the eye perceives empirical data that can't easily be expressed in words.

Each lovely limb is synchronized with other limbs, creating a pattern that's similar to the bumpy rhythms of a train ride. Ms. Kress abstracts the window behind the seated figures, putting a glare of white on the lower third of the pane and dark polygons on the top. She places the three pretty females on their plastic blue bench with such precision, she doesn't need to fuss with the view through the window. The pattern of dangling limbs suggests the repetitious light of windows streaking past stationary facades.

Such pretty ladies. With a hand that invokes the sketchy graphics in fashion ads, Ms. Kress sexualizes her subjects. She details those lean, female bodies and composes a different chic "look" for each. The women's hair comes in all three colors of a magazine spread for L'Oreal. Dressed up and still working on their "look," the characters here are waiting to be seen but by whom? Great painting always contains a mystery, and here it's the inextricable puzzle of the gaze and its object.

Ms. Kress's equally spare but eloquent painting, Italian Cafe, induces the viewer to consider location choice as a component of a person's character. It's an Italian cafe and all that signifies, with a wrought-iron bench outside and a brilliant live landscape in the background. (I reject the notion that the couple are indoors, sitting next to a cheesy mural, because of the blue light suffusing all and the painter's penchant for elegance.) The male figure stares blankly ahead at some dead abstraction with shoulders drooping. At least, he dresses nattily!

The female in this two-person drama is more engaged with her surroundings if only because the blue of her turtleneck sweater harmonizes with the setting. Connected to the scene, she nevertheless distances herself from her companion by straightening her arm against her side and raising her right knee a couple of inches, suggesting a barricade. The man's jacket is a fleshy pastel and his face is an undetermined smear; he resembles a drooping penis. But the woman projects poise and fortitude, that Barbara Stanwyck vibe.

Ms. Kress uses a fine brushstroke to sketch outlines or suggest important details. She renders large spans of clothing, the flesh of the man's face, and the landscape with a knife. One technique brings out the dominant facts of the painting and the other suggests less articulated solids for which broad abstractions will suffice. Selective vision frames and details fashion cues in the woman's clothes, make-up, and hair, and generalizes the man's face and the picturesque Nature behind him. The picture uses composition and technique to present a disconnected couple from the woman's point of view.

In Cool Boots Nancy Kress again tells us how clothing represents the person wearing it and how the parts of our appearance that are skin-covered can be abstracted so long as the costume makes a statement. A long-haired brunette wearing a western-style shirt and knee-high boots sits in the corner of a restaurant or bar. Although her outlines and the specific shaping of the boots are distinct, their color is blue or black. The chair she sits in is a luminous yellow-- it's Vincent's chair! Ms. Kress presents a human mystery lounging in some public place where people interact, but the space she occupies and the fetish boots she wears are more important than herself.

Cool Boots is a simple painting but a gorgeous one. Ms. Kress uses her knife again and layers the blue paint like she's icing a cake. For the important objects in the composition, a paint brush applies contours and character. The duality of the technique, producing abstraction or specific detail, expresses Ms. Kress' meaning, that we often let styled objects convey our significance, whereas, our human selves might be disconnected from the projection.

In these three works from her show, Ms. Kress accurately represents what passes for discourse in the human present. Dialogue and ideas are irrelevant since all the backstory we really need can be expressed by a mere gesture, some style choices, and upscale props. What matters in the human experience is dressing well and being seen in the right places. The switch permitting interaction and communion is plainly in the "off" position.