An Artist Who Can Make Paint Behave Strangely

David Reed’s first solo show in Los Angeles in five years demonstrates why so many young West Coast painters are so deeply influenced by many of the moves he makes in his abstract paintings.

First of all, there’s the technical facility the 55-year-old brings to his labor-intensive oils and enamels, five of which are given the space they need in three large rooms at Patricia Faure Gallery. Reed is a seasoned veteran who has spent the better part of three decades honing his skills and zeroing in on what he does best: getting paint to behave strangely. He makes various mixtures of pigment and medium do things they’ve never done before--things you never thought possible and others you never imagined.

The New York-based artist, who was born in San Diego--and appears to have California sunlight coursing through his veins--paints like a printmaker. This angers conservatives, who behave as if painting were a sacrosanct calling only sullied by the lowly craft, whose cheap, reproducible products have too much in common with mass consumption.

To drive this point home, Reed has installed a trio of 5-foot-long aquatints in a side gallery. Their black backgrounds and silvery spectrum suggest moonlight-tinted mystery. At the same time, their shimmering surfaces recall tacky black-velvet paintings. Wedding dreamy romance and bad taste, they smolder with sensuous energy.

In the main galleries, Reed’s paintings crank up the wattage a few-thousand-fold. Each long skinny panel consists of several translucent veils of high-keyed color he has laid down with an arsenal of squeegees. Beneath these are flat bands of color that have been applied with rollers and brushes. All of his paintings highlight the borders where one type of paint application stops and another begins.

For example, “#480� appears to be five variously sized paintings superimposed atop one another, or a gigantic print whose registration is way out of whack. Its underlying format resembles an American flag, albeit one seen in reverse, elongated and compressed. With lavender stripes and a blood-red field of swooping strokes, its colors are nothing like those of the original. In fact, they recall photographic negatives or the view through night-vision goggles. Wispy aqua waves wash across three-quarters of the image, sandwiching a Pepto-Bismol pink blob between foreground and back.

The remaining four paintings make “#480� look like a pretty picture, an attractive landscape in which anyone would love to linger. A 12-foot-long yellow one has the presence of acid-laced lemon meringue pie filling, its melt-in-your-mouth sweetness shot through with the pungent bite of an unnatural additive. A 14-footer, most of which has been painted over with a thick coat of white, makes you feel as if you’re peeking through a keyhole at an illicit scene.

Another 12-footer (“#478�) and a single vertical panel (“#471�) are among the best paintings Reed has made. These masterpieces of spatial complexity and coloristic kinkiness combine the down-and-dirty grittiness of the street with the sleazy beauty of neon and the gorgeous glow of smog-enhanced sunsets. If graffiti could dream, this is what it would see.

Patricia Faure Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, (310) 449-1479, through April 6. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Bruce Conner Offers Old Tricks and New Works

At Michael Kohn Gallery, a solo show and a group exhibition suggest that Bruce Conner is up to his old tricks.

The solo show is a straightforward affair. In the darkened rear gallery, a monitor plays eight of the legendary artist’s 16-millimeter films that recently have been transferred to DVD. All are classics of truly independent filmmaking and shouldn’t be missed.

“Breakaway� (1966) is a 21/2-minute sequence that plays twice, first backward, then forward. In it, Toni Basil appears to be dancing and changing in and out of mod black-and-white outfits faster than a flashing strobe light. Long before music videos, at a time when structuralist films were slowing perception down to a Minimalist crawl, Conner shot and edited his piece so it functioned like a fistful of amphetamines. Boldly demonstrating that art can be smart and sexy, it still looks fresh today.

Also included are “Report� (1963-67), a chilling meditation on John F. Kennedy’s assassination; “The White Rose� (1967), which memorializes the interment of a 2,300-pound painting Jay DeFeo had been working on for eight years; and “Take the 5:10 to Dreamland� (1976), a poetic collage of images set to a melody by Patrick Gleeson. Available for a minimum donation of $30 to the L.A. Free Clinic, the L.A. Food Bank or the Venice Family Clinic, the DVD is a steal.

In the front gallery, 21 collages and drawings appear to be new works by Conner. Most are homemade Rorschach blots that have been cut into the shape of leaves and glued to paper scrolls. The rest are ghostly versions of Conner’s inkblot drawings. But the price list states that these works were made by four artists: ANON, Anonymouse, Anon. and Anonymous.

Conner has a history of being slippery about his identity. In 1965, he used his thumbprint as his signature. From 1971 through ‘73, he signed Dennis Hopper’s name to his works. And in 1974 he locked away a series to protect its anonymity.

The paradox of being a superstar outsider artist is not lost on the Bay Area legend, who has never shied away from trying something different. A light, almost lyrical touch suffuses his new works, which seem as if a burden had been lifted from them.

Michael Kohn Gallery, 8071 Beverly Blvd., L.A., (323) 658-8088, through March 30. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Looking Past Laughs to Brittle Beauty, Sadness

When someone says “I laughed out loud,� I’m always curious to know just what sort of sounds they made. Like people, laughter comes in all shapes and sizes. From great rolling guffaws to muffled giggles, it physically signals the presence of anything from amusement to nervousness, screaming glee to biting sarcasm.

At L.A. Louver Gallery, Tom Wudl’s new paintings give precise form to a peculiar strand of laughter. On the surface, his 10 portraits of entertainers and still lifes that depict the tools of their trades are amusing, filled with enough art history references to occupy viewers who like to keep their minds busy so they don’t have to deal with their feelings.

But there’s more going on in Wudl’s variously scaled acrylics on canvas, some of which are also painted with encaustic (a pigment and hot wax mixture), than immediately meets the eye. The more time you spend with them, the more pointed and touching their brittle beauty becomes.

A deep sadness suffuses these strangely sophisticated paintings. Their refinement has a lot less to do with the knowing nods they make to Pablo Picasso and Jasper Johns, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy than with Wudl’s ability to convey the quiet desperation that often drives creative people to do what they do.

In our culture, artists are thought of as being free, unencumbered by ordinary responsibilities and left alone to pursue their dreams. Forget the economic problems such fantasies present, Wudl’s works lay bare the emotional cost and psychological pain that often take shape in the isolation of the studio. In his hands, this anxiety gives rise to an absurd sense of humor whose fragile, high-pitched laugher is all the more poignant for keeping self-pity at bay, if barely.

L.A. Louver Gallery, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955, through March 30. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Mixed Messages About Art’s Place in the World

Jorge Pardo’s two paintings at 1301PE Gallery take his oeuvre full circle, emphasizing what a strange trip it’s been.

One of the first works the L.A. artist exhibited 12 years ago was a common stepladder, two legs of which had been replaced by exotic bubinga wood. Another was a pair of baseball bats whose business ends had been replaced with identically configured sections of cedar and mahogany. Part utilitarian object and part beautifully grained copy, both sculptures send mixed messages about the function of art and its place in the world.

Likewise, Pardo’s new multi-panel works are cogent essays on the relationship between decoration and use. At 6 feet tall and between 16 and 19 feet long, each resembles a high-end fabric store’s fabulous displays. Riotously punchy colors and idiosyncratic shapes jostle against one another, competing for your attention as they draw out your opinion about what works and what doesn’t.

Pardo designs his patterns on a computer and uses an inkjet printer to apply them to canvas. Sometimes he brushes on a stripe, smear or circle of pumpkin-orange paint, but most of the time he lets his off-balance patterns do their own thing. Rarely presenting sections large enough to reveal how the fascinating patterns repeat themselves, Pardo shows himself to be a master at leaving viewers wanting more.

1301PE Gallery, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., (323) 938-5822, through Saturday.