For his first solo show in New York, the Detroit painter (and accomplished DJ) George Rahme drew inspiration from the poetry of Khalil Gibran and the Motor City's sprawling scenery. Domestic materials, like enamel house paint, and found artworks—watercolors he picks up at thrift shops or vintage books—are sliced, diced, and reconstituted as innovative mixed-media collages deceitfully reminiscent of Old Master landscapes. But Rahme says he is looking to the future, not the past. And if his hometown's industrial present is bleak, its future apparently is a return to bucolic farmland.

In Big Three, 2009, Rahme blends classic subjects, like battling ships bobbing on gestural seas, with Impressionistic flowers à la Hassam or Manet and remnants of realistic landscapes. Some pictures contain more overt references to other artists; in The Blue Iris, 2009, for instance, a pair of blooms from van Gogh's Irises is juxtaposed with a landscape painting scavenged from the Salvation Army and a canon from the back of a jacket for a recording of Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" (the front is used in The Pink of Condition, 2009).

The images are rich with action, and thus the show is aptly titled "It's All There Already." The 20 pieces range from seven-foot landscapes populated by hunters and fisherman to intimate studies of mythological ruins and familiar household apparatuses, like a broom. They are genuine and refreshing takes on the traditional form of painting. And with his works so far incorporating materials like marine foam and subjects like romance novels and record covers, I'm excitedly awaiting Rahme's next creations.