WILSHIRE CENTER

Mary Jones’ crisp geometric abstractions do some heavy name-dropping--Russian Constructivism, Leger, semiotics, Mondrian, Lindner--yet they remain rooted in down home America.

Exploring the garish suburbia of lawn ornaments, perfectly manicured yards and gray gravel driveways, Jones gives that plastic universe elegant backlighting that lends it the appearance of a mechanized paradise. Luminous volumes--spheres, cones, cylinders--are positioned like classical statuary in these industrial landscapes where decorative motifs sprout in place of trees and the Technicolor sky is marbled like a pink and yellow popsicle.

Jones’ paintings tend to do optical flips and when they read as having spatial depth they take on an extraterrestrial quality; when they go flat they look like some slick, Deco advertisement you might’ve seen in an issue of Vanity Fair from the ‘40s. Jones’ previous work was built around iconic forms similar to those commonly known as universal symbols, but these paintings find her moving in an increasingly streamlined and cerebral direction. Her paintings are becoming tighter and cooler, more urbane and witty. They’re rather European in that regard, but the way they underscore the idea of artifice is profoundly American.

In his recent book “Travels in Hyperreality,” Italian semiotician Umberto Eco concludes that in America “the condition of pleasure is that something be faked.” Eco would no doubt get a kick out of Jones’ beautifully empty panoramas, which seem content to bask in the glow of the way things look and aren’t particularly interested in what things might actually be. (Ovsey Gallery, 126 N. La Brea Ave., to Oct. 4.)