Gregory Prestegord's Philadelphia paintings at F.A.N. Gallery

Gregory Prestegord's new show features one marquee painting: World Champions, a boldly theatrical study of Phillies fans milling on Broad Street. It's unlike the remaining works, which are cityscapes, yet it provides a badly needed element. Most of Prestegord's works are boldly executed urban scenes that are either devoid of life or the figures in them are merely compositional elements.

If Prestegord's Philadelphia is a town where the vacant lots outnumber the factories, and a battered old passenger liner— once the fastest ship on the ocean and proudly christened United States— served as an iconic image for the downside of things, then his Phillies fans milling around an impromptu bonfire represent the folks who once worked in those factories, and may have felt a swell of pride at seeing the once beautiful black, white and red liner under way.

Prestegord's work is a type of Impressionism undreamt of by the Impressionists, who lived in an optimistic time and saw white Europeans as the paragons of civilization. Prestegord's art is Impressionism infected by Expressionism, with its shriek of despair. It sees that something has gone wrong— that factories are shuttered or leveled to the ground, and that a ship that was once meant to represent America on the high seas is now a beached rust-bucket.

At least, all of this makes me despair. Prestegord isn't necessarily a despairing artist, any more than I think his milling fans are despairing. They may be witnessing the downturning of history's wheel, but all they care about is the world championship that their hometown team has won. And Prestegord is there to memorialize it. He strikes me to as a gritty artist whose art celebrates his beaten-down-but-never-quite-out hometown and its inhabitants.