LA CIENEGA AREA

Everybody knows the exclamations “Interesting!” and “Different!” don’t mean that at all. They mean the speaker has been momentarily nonplussed by some grotesque version of something perfectly familiar.

A case in point is the West Coast debut of young Peter Schuyff, a Dutch-born artist working in New York. He paints large untitled abstractions that fleetingly strike one as original because they are reminiscent of too many common places to sort out immediately.

Three of the five large pictures speak the accents of Baroque graffiti with their big, bulbous serpentine abstract shapes. But they don’t spell anything or form letters. Instead, they are subdivided with geometric bands of color that make the paintings look like large exotic snakes and tend to create optical illusions in the manner of old ‘60s psychedelic Op art. Just as we are about to put this chimera to rest as Neo-Op (Will the revivals never cease?) we notice one more trick. The big abstract shapes don’t just read as solids (reflecting colored lights), they also read as holes in the picture . Good grief and shades of Schuyff’s countryman, M. C. Escher!

Some people will do anything for a laugh. All the same, the insight sets you thinking that both Schuyff and Escher update classic Dutch realism. That’s not different, but it is interesting. (Larry Gagosian Gallery, 510 N. Robertson Blvd., to June 8.)