Take a moment to look closely at Kathryn Kampovsky’s new works, and, if you do take the time, you’ll see an artist using paint as a means rather than an end. Simply, here is an artist unbound by expectation, or by medium. Across five canvases, we see Kampovsky explore the intersections and interconnections between high and low through her combination of acrylic and oil in the same work.

“For this show, I’ve been spending days doing acrylic washes, exploring what I want to show through, being free with myself — knowing that I can cover it up with oil.” This nuanced combination brings a luminosity to each work, a depth achieved by the qualities of each medium: acrylic’s opacity combined with oil’s richness to extraordinary effect.

Mix in her subtle approach to narrative – have a look at what ceiling fans can mean in movies when you have a chance – and, in works like Home Sweet Home we see an artist teasing us with questions of trust, of safety, of personal space. We’re complicit, voyeurs, just off the welcome mat, peering in, the door as much a window as a beating heart, what she describes as “mundane moments when you don’t know somebody’s watching you.” And, while there’s no need to draw a direct connection, Kampovsky does mine herself and her experiences for foundations and ideas. This much should be expected, as she’s part of a new generation of women artists teasing back the edges of the personal, bringing the previously unspoken and unseen to the surface.

The Herd, on the opposite end of the spectrum, is quieter, warmer, more welcoming. Here there’s the warmth of the familiar, in tone and image, with warm reds and pulsing purples set against the blazing yellow of a woman glancing back toward the viewer. Of course, a herd is as much a thing in unison as it is a pejorative for those who lack the capacity to think for themselves. Here, it’s the former. But even in such an inviting image, Kampovsky adds just that little edge, that sense of unease, of vulnerability, the male figure pushing from the top in toward the center, the center itself compressing in the grip of an embrace.

An Apple a Day draws us back into the unfamiliar. We’re peering past the symbol of original sin, the apple – also a symbol for growth, for nourishment, for self-care. We’re seeing what Sigmund Freud describes as some part of a person we’re not supposed to see. We’re seeing consumption at the same time we’re being consumed; we’re devouring image and idea at precisely the moment we’re on the verge of falling into the void.

Step back, and you’ll see The Break In, where the fundamental concepts of interior and exterior blur again. Familiar tropes for identity – lipstick, a bra – give way to a set of bucket seats, her face pressed into an open sunroof, the rear of the implied car a tag on her belt, broken glass shattering and revealing a midriff. Here’s the great ambiguity of our time, how we reconcile the technological and the mechanical with the personal and the emotional.

Through these new works, Kampovsky invites us to immerse ourselves in significant issues of the contemporary world. Are we safe? Are we unified? Are we a community of individuals, or individuals in search of community? Whether through the freeze of an embrace or the break of a gaze, or glass, each work demands we move closer at precisely the same time we should be fearful of coming too close. That’s the true beauty, subtlety, and significance of these extraordinary new works.