LA CIENEGA AREA

One of the first things you notice about Stanley Boxer’s exhibition of oils on linen (1980-85) is their titles--mile-long words composed of compressed poetic phrases. “Plushpreludeofheatheredadvance” and “Hammeringheatchillingnoon” are a striking departure from the uninspiring genre of labeling that gives us “Untitled” and “Series 62, Square 20.”

One of the next things is Boxer’s use of lurid, psychedelic color on gestural paintings that might otherwise suggest such natural phenomena as falling rain or wind rustling through bushes.

But the titles and the overheated hues are only distractions from the essence of these works by a veteran New York artist. At heart, he makes competent, old-fashioned paintings concerned with a direct merger of material and feeling. What he reveals is a struggle between gritty material--applied with muscle--and his own lyrical inclinations.

These more-or-less monochromatic works are built of thick pigment in overlapping strokes that may fall from the sky, converge at right angles or march to the center where they swirl into circles. Subtleties abound in underpainting, soft streaking and forceful fields of brush strokes, but it’s hard to see them. The crusty impasto and the direction and form of the strokes say as much about the way paintings are made as about references to nature. That’s reasonable, but Boxer seems at odds with himself as he undercuts painterly substance with graffiti-artist color and lyricism with muscularity. (Ruth Bachofner Gallery, 804 La Cienega Blvd., to Feb. 22.)