Review: From drops on a computer screen, Valerie Green creates tiny kaleidoscopic worlds

Valerie Green’s exhibition at Moskowitz Bayse is an evolution of her previous work, in which she photographed the sky as seen through a smartphone screen protector stuck to the moon roof of her car. This latest work is also a game of layers, consisting of photographs of drops of screen cleaner sprayed onto a computer monitor.

At the time, the monitor displayed layered, geometric abstractions created by the artist in shades of turquoise and pink, punctuated with graphic, black-and-white stripes or polka dots. The resulting photographs, printed on smooth, shimmery aluminum, are visually complex plays on abstract painting, updated for our screen-addled age.

The most striking elements are the drops of liquid. Not only do they serve as circular counterpoints to the angular shapes beneath, but also as little lenses, refracting and distorting the grid of pixels into more organic forms, each one a tiny rainbow kaleidoscope.

Green has created a hall of mirrors, or perhaps a feedback loop, reflecting not the outside world but the properties of the screen itself. She calls our attention to its glassy surface while giving it a presence that feels lush, even sensuous.

Work in the gallery’s second room takes this idea a step further, presenting photographs of abstractions created from printed and cut images. They’re more literal and less resolved, but they still speak to the artist’s deep interest in surfaces. Green reminds us that the screen is not a transparent window, but rather a lens that transforms everything that flits across it.

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Moskowitz Bayse, 743 N. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles. Through June 25. Closed Sundays and Mondays. (323) 790-4882, www.moskowitzbayse.com

Full frame of Valerie Green’s “IMG7454 (auto-rotate).” (Valerie Green / Moskowitz Bayse)

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