LA CIENEGA AREA

Linda Burnham’s gallery debut takes off from Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase” in black, white and gray drawings and paintings of figures moving through space. Singly, fragmented or in headless pairs, they kneel, walk, dance, tumble and fall in pictures that are primarily about movement. Burnham gives us no details, personalities or emotions--just chunky forms suggested by multiple black outlines. Instead of overlapping forms or faceting volumes, she uses the “lines of action” familiar to everyone from cartoonists to modern abstractionists. Nothing new here, yet the work is solid. Burnham knows how to engage pictorial space in energetic movement and that isn’t a bad beginning.

David Ligare’s concurrent show of “Thrown Drapery” watercolors and paintings revives his work of the late ‘70s and includes a large, recently finished canvas called “Delos.” All feature an airborne wad of fabric flying in a bright blue sky above a coastal horizon. That the utter improbability of this subject still takes us by surprise is a measure of the artist’s vision. He can be accused of turning an inspired idea into a gimmick, but he can’t be accused of grinding out quick reruns. His works are so well painted that the graded skies, sparkling surf and modeled drapery are a joy to look at. Beyond that lie metaphoric fascinations related to cosmic buoyancy and summer freedom. (Koplin Gallery, 8225 1/2 Santa Monica Blvd., to Aug. 24.)