LA CIENEGA AREA

Lari Pittman must have one of the strangest aesthetic sensibilities on the contemporary scene. His art broadcasts a repellent message about decadence and writhes in so much stringy pigment and so many conflicting motifs that you want to yell, “Stop!”

Pittman will not stop, nor should he, for his put-off methods add up to original, intriguingly troublesome art. In his new work, he does such odd things as paint gourds with scenes of disintegrating island cities and with words citing the virtues of hope, charity, compassion and faith. The cities--encapsulated in gooey turquoise bubbles or teardrops--reappear in the center of some of the paintings that dominate the show. Apparently imagined or vaguely remembered places, these scenes seem to symbolize civilization run amok.

Swimming around them are paint splats, ropey lines that resemble intestines or kelp, black personages that could have been invented by Miro and overlapping geometric shapes. One painting, “The Veneer of Order,” has a variation of the Gettysburg Address scrawled across its lower half, while some other works’ titles refer to moments in American history or aspirations of our forefathers. All this spins around in art that only appears to be confused. In fact it is absolutely, perhaps obsessively, centered on what is wrong with the world. (Rosamund Felsen Gallery, 669 N. La Cienega Blvd., to Dec. 21.)