LA CIENEGA AREA

Bright and happy as a Pepsi commercial, Tom Gathman’s paintings effervesce with a gaiety that verges on hysteria. His favorite color is a lurid royal blue. It’s a blue that David Hockney manages to use quite effectively, but Gathman lays it on a bit thick, and what’s worse, fails to put it to work. It’s just there, in loud abundance.

The primary marks in Gathman’s paintings look as though they were made with either a squeegee or a very broad paintbrush; it’s a sweeping, energized mark that owes much to Franz Kline and Frank Stella. Crowding around that big mark are splatters, dribbles, drops and sharply shadowed configurations that float in front of the canvas 3-D style. Gathman’s work has nothing to do with the avant-garde art dialogue, nor does it appear to have much to do with anything particularly personal to Gathman. What it seems to have to do with is setting off beige sectional sofas. (Gallery West, 107 S. Robertson Blvd., to April 12.)