WILSHIRE CENTER

Sfumato art in refers to a technique used to achieve imperceptibly subtle gradations of shading from dark to light--”like smoke dissolving in the air” is how the dictionary puts it. Da Vinci was good at sfumato and Rembrandt had a fair hand for it as well.

L.A. artist Joel Bass updates the technique with impressive panache in an exhibition of paintings depicting dark, mystical landscapes in which roiling masses of smoke and sky collide. Bass first made a name for himself as a Minimalist, but these visionary abstractions are as far from Minimalism as you could get. Lush and atmospheric, the pictures are built around an illusion of deep space; you feel as though you might fall into them should you gaze too long or hard, and this sense of epic scale is matched by themes of biblical dimension. Ancient beliefs concerning divine creation and retribution seem to lurk behind these turbulent upheavals of the cosmos.

At first glance Bass’ paintings read as details of some larger figurative image that have been blown up to the point that they’re unrecognizably distorted. It seems as if a logical picture will click into focus if one stares long enough, but that never quite happens. The pictures refuse to be organized or nailed down and they radiate a dark, dangerous sensuality that throws a wrench in any analytical apparatus the viewer may hope to tame them with.

Bass grants the viewer a few familiar clues--tree branches, broken boards, a scattering of leaves and rivulets of water pop up here and there--but these comforting signposts ultimately are engulfed by the overwhelming mood of apocalypse that pulsates from the pictures.

We see huge hunks of shattered stone being swept along by torrential waters; an eerie forest clearing awash in unearthly golden light; a fissure in the surface of the Earth that reveals a blue void beneath. Ravishingly beautiful though they are, Bass’ paintings are also a bit frightening; it’s as if the natural laws that separate sky and sea have eroded and the Earth is caving in on itself. (Burnett Miller, 964 N. La Brea Ave., to June 28.)