DOWNTOWN

Like time-lapse photography, Terence LaNoue’s mixed-media paintings seem to laminate 20 centuries worth of cultures together into chaotic color fields. LaNoue explains his work as having to do with universal archetypes, and these abstracted collages, which are punctuated with signs and symbols, left unstretched and tacked to the wall like animals hides, monkey with the time line just as he intends them to.

His work is modern in that it’s overloaded with data and strives to cut a stylish profile. However, the patterning and colors he favors are distinctly primitive. LaNoue comments that visits to India and archeological sites in Central America made a big impression on him and it’s easy to see the effect of those experiences in his work.

The surfaces of these six large paintings are densely textured to the point that they have the appearance of being embossed. Patternings evocative of Navajo art are cut into thick pools of intense color, which are also broken up with hunks of netting and rope. Random lines can be read as stick figures or networks of rivers and roads; this lends the work the quality of ancient aerial maps. The jungle drums really start to pound when you get a load of LaNoue’s titles, which refer to Altamira, Amazonia and King Solomon’s Mines. The paintings add nothing new to Jung’s basic ball of wax but they’re very pretty. (Cirrus, 542 S. Alameda St., to March 8.)