None of the players in Boris Ilyin’s...

None of the players in Boris Ilyin’s paintings are engaged with one another; all are silent, deep in thought and inaccessible. The emotional deep freeze that grips these people--most of whom appear to be comfortably well-off Americans--is at odds with the paradisiacal settings they inhabit and the activities they perform. Permeated with the white heat of the noonday sun, Ilyin’s pictures feature lunch-hour nappers outside starkly modern office buildings, pedestrians waiting for buses, bicyclists, a couple having a picnic, a woman reading a book at the beach.

Favoring a palette reminiscent of Hopper, Ilyin depicts his subjects in a flat, matter-of-fact manner and gives them rigidly composed faces that hide whatever emotion they might be experiencing. Grounded in fields of heavily etched shadows, they look as if the midday warmth and the inertia of leisure time has robbed them of the ability to move. (Ankrum Gallery, 657 N. La Cienega Ave., to Aug. 30.)