LA CIENEGA AREA

Discipline may be the best thing going for Renee Petropoulos’ painting. Though she leaps from abstraction to representation, from decorative sparkle to brooding atmosphere and from rigid containment to adventurous construction, she makes the whole endeavor look like a seriously ordered inquiry into the possibilities of contemporary painting. She may beguile us with clear form, bright color and the sheer fun of looking at paintings that pack surprises as they continue around wooden borders, but she never, ever turns out a slapdash picture.

In her first solo show here, Petropoulos marches off in two contradictory directions: architectonic abstractions built of layered, mosaic-like sections (reminiscent of Hundertwasser) and representational works centering on a length of drapery, a pile of rocks or a patterned bowl. The former are confidently gay and sprightly with paint-framed “windows” and “doors” expanding into rounded rectangles, checkerboard patterns dancing around the edges and painted wood, smokestack-like projections poking out of the tops. The others contain vestiges of these cheerful grids but relegate them to frames or borders of more-or-less realistically rendered objects. These odd juxtapositions make little aesthetic sense; instead they leave the impression that Petropoulos is in the midst of a transition and that the grid has become a decorative device, temporarily serving as a security blanket. (Rosamund Felsen Gallery, 669 N. La Cienega Blvd., to Aug. 31.)