WILSHIRE CENTER

John Mandel draws like one of those old “How to Draw” books in which the artist could render a perfect figure by just dragging the charcoal down the paper. All the muscles were anatomically correct and the nubbly texture of the surface looked like it was made by a machine. Kids trying to copy them developed severe inferiority complexes.

Mandel uses this maddening mechanical knack to make diptychs and triptychs with a slightly kinky metaphysical edge drawn from--you guessed it--Neo-Expressionism. (This seems like an easy time for an artist to look original. Just do something else. Anything else.)

Anyway, Mandel likes titles like “Untitled: His Quietude, His Labor, His Trial by Fire” illustrated with a mechanical totemic upright, a coil and a male torso. A few examples like this yield the notion that this is some manner of technocratic celebration of the triumph of rational engineering raised to the status of the occult.

It brings back World’s Fairs of the ‘30s when artists painted murals to The Spirit of Electricity. Actually, it would have been the perfect sensibility for an artist who made “How to Draw” books, except those guys never made any art; they just made “How To Draw” books. (Irit Krygier Gallery, 7416 Beverly Blvd., to April 11.)