THE VALLEY

Walter Impert takes a highly romantic view of the manner in which man has imposed himself on nature; his nighttime views of Los Angeles cast the sky above as an exotic tapestry rippled with purples and pinks, the city below as a sparkling jewel box of headlights and street lights. No starlight though; the constellations are enveloped in a velvet blanket of pollution.

Rendered in saturated Kodachrome colors, Impert’s pictures sanitize Los Angeles and convert it into a crisp, clean place. There are no people on these wide, well-kept streets, and the only sounds one hears are the freeway whooshing like a river in the distance, or water splashing in a fountain in front of a bank. It’s enough to give a New Yorker the heebie-jeebies.

Also on view are some rather icky paintings by Cynda Valle. Slightly Surreal images of distended tongues, sleeping figures and interior scenes, lit by the light of television sets, are embellished with glued-on beads, patches of velvet and gunked-up tangles of bright blue fringe. Call it Betty Rubble Realism or Bag Lady Moderne--either way these pictures are a pointless mess. (Orlando Gallery, 14553 Ventura Blvd., to Nov. 29.)