LA CIENEGA AREA

What is this? Either artists have remarkably felicitous names these days or an epidemic attack of careerism is causing them to adopt adept pseudonyms. The latest example comes in the form of the West Coast debut of a Swiss-born New York sculptor and painter called Not Vital. Either his folks had a Dadaist turn of mind or he adopted a sobriquet to head off his critics. Who would ever dare say Not Vital’s work was not vital?

Actually Not Vital’s painting and sculpture are domesticated academic late Modernism, probably deriving from earthworks--alluvial Minimalism with prehistoric overtones. “Nature Morte” looks like giant cavemen’s pliers covered in cowhide and dipped in tar, “Pow-Paw” the fossilized remains of a dinosaur fin. The tendency to anthropomorphism reaches its apogee in “Wednesday’s Child,” which dangerously resembles a Disney dancing tree with a sprained ankle.

By contrast, Not Vital’s painting is a gray hybrid of Jasper Johns’ whispering touch and Abstract Expressionist marking slightly updated. Since both this kind of painting and allusions to primal muck now have severely limited capacity to incite us to insight, we are left with elegance dressed up in Neanderthal skins. It’s hard to imagine that Not Vital is the name of a latter-day salon artist. (Margo Leavin Gallery, 812 N. Robertson Blvd., to March 8.)