Jenny Brillhart’s premiere solo exhibit in Maine is an event that needs your attention. On first seeing the paintings in her exhibit, “Placement,” at Bangor’s Zillman Art Museum through April 21, one sees elegant geometrical abstractions in close, light greys and muted colors, a series of works investigating spare composi-tions and their spatial variations.

Brillhart can paint. Her scenes are not only accurate, but also precise, and she can handle the brush and knife with a rare ability, which she uses to excellent effect. These scenes will strike many (at first, at least) as being as cold as the aluminum on which she paints. The sense of remove, however, dissolves as we begin to see the hyper-realistic images as paintings rather than photographically observed scenes. It’s easy to miss Brillhart’s marks because they play their representational parts so well, but with a closer look (I mean this literally – when you get close to the canvas to observe the surface), her mark making appears as nothing short of masterly – and it is handled to brilliant effect.