LA CIENEGA AREA

Charles Arnoldi is wedged into most people’s minds as the chap who concocted a painting-cum-sculpture hybrid by making rectangles of criss-crossed sticks. He actually has considerably more range than that and it shows in a dozen large recent works that make up his most energetic and masterful show in recent memory. In addition to sticks he also composes by attacking wooden rectangles with chain saw, ax and brushes loaded with strident color.

He confidently works at two markedly contrasting paces. One minute he flails away in an expressionistic mode that brackets everybody from Jackson Pollock to Julian Schnabel, the next he lies back into an elegant manner suggesting the cultivated touch of Jasper Johns’ cross-hatched paintings.

Much here provokes honest admiration but not hearty enthusiasm. Reservations about the works are somehow suggested in their titles. Calling one “I Bury Hatchets” is a forgivable bad pun. It’s the ones that point strongly to the artist’s awareness of what he is doing that rankle. When he takes up residence in Johns he calls the result “Squatters.” When he splashes his sticks with Neo-Ex color it’s called “A Partnership” and when he introduces hunks of manhole cover--a new material for him--it is called “Room to Grow.”

This preoccupation with artistic strategy shows in the work. It is subsumed in a calculated virtuosity excluding any sense of emotional commitment. It’s gorgeous, smart stuff and if you don’t like the splashy blue one we are happy to serve up a nice calm tan one. (James Corcoran Gallery, 8223 Santa Monica Blvd., to Jan. 4.)