Up north on Frankford Avenue stands a lone building unattached to the nearby flurry of galleries, pizza joints and coffee shops. This establishment – Fjord – is home to a number of artist studios, as well as a first-floor gallery space that showcases the work of members and outside artists alike. Throughout the month of June, Fjord is exhibiting the painting show “A country road. A tree. Evening.”

While the show’s title may seem a bit daft at first, the phrase is, interestingly enough, Samuel Beckett’s setting description for his famous play “Waiting for Godot.” An accompanying text includes a quotation from the play, as well as an excerpt from Hugo von Hoffmannsthall’s “The Lord Chandos Letter,” which exposes the angst of a fictional writer in the midst of a creative crisis. And what do all of these disparate elements have to do with a show about painting, exactly? That can probably be best answered by determining what painting even has to do with painting.

To summarize the rather enlightening essay included by curator Sean Robert FitzGerald, the fact that people are still tussling with the issue of painting’s relevance should say something about the inquiry. Although the question has been rehashed innumerable times for as long as anyone alive can recall, it doesn’t seem to back down. The solution, FitzGerald asserts, is to accept painting on the grounds of its absurdity (as with much else in life) and proceed from there. Besides, what is contemporary art if not often steeped in its own ridiculousness?

Ginny Casey, “Butterfly Tattoo.” Photo courtesy of Fjord

Nine artists provide abstract works of pigment-on-canvas for the exhibit. Many of the pieces are minimal, and few have a basis in reality. Where works do reference the outside world, they do so in highly stylized ways. Ginny Casey’s “Butterfly Tattoo” depicts the head and upper body of a human figure with a blue cat perched like a parrot on its left shoulder. The entire scene is washed out and pastel, and a hand probes in from the side to render a butterfly in the middle of the figure’s forehead. The eyeless cat merely looks on as its presumed owner makes what will surely be among the worst permanent decisions one can make, tackling the social taboo of the face “tat” with surprising calmness and grace.

Ezra Tessler, “The Gulls.” Photo courtesy of Fjord

Ezra Tessler provides no hint as to why a yellow-and-black painting called “The Gulls” is named after seabirds instead of yellow jacket wasps or caution tape, but in this show, perhaps that is for the best. A rounded, zig-zag form meanders its way across contrasted patterns of alternating colors, and at close inspection, tiny flecks of red hang suspended amidst the fray. Are these the gulls flapping their way across a maddening sunset? Probably not, but this painting stands out as one of the most lively images currently at Fjord.

Gavin Toye, “Television.” Photo courtesy of Fjord

Television is the subject of the only text-based piece in the show, Gavin Toye’s aptly titled “Television.” Here, on a field of minty green hues, Toye apparently drug his finger through the paint in one extended motion in order to write the two-tiered, four-syllable word. The letters seem framed by a box (the product of the unending stroke) which may or may not represent the very device it proclaims.

Peter Shear, “Untitled.” Photo courtesy of Fjord

Other fascinating paintings are the two tiny, textured canvases – one white and purple, the other pink and purple framed in black – by Peter Shear (both untitled), the vertical blocks of shaped canvas in Jim Lee’s denim-like work, and the sometimes-globular, sometimes-structured washes of Alice Browne. Jonathan Allmaier, Michael Voss and Craig Taylor also furnish paintings, which solidify a show that revels in its own irrationality. “A country road. A tree. Evening.” will hang at Fjord through June 30.

Fjord is located at 2419 Frankford Ave, Philadelphia; [email protected]; fjordspace.com.