HOLLYWOOD AREA

Neo-Expressionism has a dreamy manifestation that might be called Neo-Arcadianism and James Trivers practices it in his debut solo. His version is very much by the book in paintings that depict afternoon parks with classical statuary. The pictures suggest a poetic youth in modern Rome who dozes in the Villa Borghese thinking he sees Daphnis and Cloe in the clouds. In “Mystery of Life,” a group of gauzy figures in togas lounges about philosophizing and feeding the pigeons. In “Disney Version,” a dog chases a Frisbee with hallucinatory repetition.

Trivers’ painting style is watercolor thin and given to shy poetic devices like using splashed paint for foliage. The approach is persuasive in its sincerity, lack of guile and sweetness, but it casts suspicion on itself with underlying mannerism. There is something here too pedestrian for even the metaphysics of Puvis de Chavannes. The pictures work, but they dissolve like after-dinner mints. (Newspace Gallery, 5241 Melrose Ave., to May 30.)