WILSHIRE CENTER

There’s a tad too much Sturm und Drang about Robert Ramirez’s paintings. This is village smithy art, all bulging muscles and sweaty brow, and these heavily impastoed pastiches--mostly of heroic male nudes and Grecian urns--look as if they’d never dry. Ramirez employs stylistic innovations that originated with De Kooning, Bruce Connors and Larry Rivers, then puts his own little twist on the package: He poufs netting onto large canvases, then slathers a Neo-Ex image into/onto it. The results are grungy and macho . This work needs a truss. (Fiona Whitney, 962 N. La Brea, to June 28.).