When Artnet editor Walter Robinson first showed his "Romance Series" at New York's Metro Pictures back in the eighties, he had recently presented another group of paintings depicting unglamorous patent drugs and salves. For his "Romance Series," which returns to Metro Pictures this month, he turned to another drugstore staple: the paperback romance novel. Robinson sums up the work as paintings "of people kissing, romance, beautiful women, strong men, and desire." But the subject is more steamy than sappy. Culled from the covers of fifties pulp fiction, Robinson's images of girls and guns are painted in an appropriately passionate manner—and the series still demonstrates that, as the artist says, "the act of putting paint on canvas is an intimate act suited well to depicting intimate acts."