WILSHIRE CENTER

Charles Kessler’s paintings are so earnestly passionate that he comes off as an incurable romantic or a devotee of Neo-Expressionist hysteria. In fact, he’s neither. While his work has an off-putting naivete that can seem gushy, it also has an undeniable core of historical seriousness.

Kessler responds to the art and life around him, as artists have always done. The difference in his sort of Expressionism is a particular openness to experience, transformed by rather primitive workmanship and sophisticated interests. As an Angeleno transplanted to New York, he has glowing memories of tropical climes and harsh encounters with a grubby, cold city--all re-created in his paintings. He also has love affairs with the art so prevalent in Manhattan. “Serpent Evangelist,” for example, was inspired by Piero della Francesca’s “St. Simon the Apostle” in the Frick Collection. Kessler’s cerise, twisted shape, presented as an abstraction, packs the emotional charge of the saint into a vibrant torso. Other paintings recall late Picasso.

The show is an odd but invigorating assortment of images (from brilliant flowers to gray grids), sizes (tiny to large)and mediums (acrylic on paper, canvas, bamboo shades, plastic and Styrofoam). Works contrast the artist’s East and West Coast homes and suggest that he is making a mature move from an effusive state of mind to one of comparative restraint. They do not suggest that he will turn into a New York painter or lose the rough edge that masks his intellect in idiosyncratic painting.

Concurrently, Scott Miller shows small watercolors and ink drawings meticulously worked in astonishing detail. They are simultaneously grotesque and charming amusements that comment on contemporary horrors. A dragon’s belly unzips and spills out a load of houses in a city already choked with buildings. An outsize telephone stands above a crowd on a pedestal as a bug-like creature clamors desperately toward it. A letter to the President reads:”Before you start the war, let me put my baby to bed.” These themes (and many more)are worked out in a claustrophobic style, through a sensibility reminiscent of Bosch and Bruegel. Miller’s art projects neurosis simply by looking so pretty and protesting so vehemently. (Jan Baum Gallery, 170 S. La Brea Ave., to March 2.)