WILSHIRE CENTER

Photo Realism, with its extremely limited painterly vocabulary, is very much out of fashion these days, and many former practitioners of the genre have turned to more gestural and emotive forms of expression. This is particularly true of Bruce Everett, who spent most of the 1970s painting intimate close-ups of industrial objects but has now reemerged as a landscape painter indicating various debts to the Southern California plein-air “school” of the 1920s and the nubby pointillism of late Monet.

The work is generally more interesting in concept than in execution. Everett’s central focus is that which lurks outside the confines of the frame or false perspective of the mise en scene : the frustratingly hidden manifestation or vista that lies beyond the bend in the road or is maddeningly screened from view by a bush or guard rail. This is a world where the aura of the sublime, usually rooted in the picturesque elements of nature itself, remains an unfulfilled desire.

Unfortunately, so is the quality of the painting. In loosening up his brushwork from the rigors of realism, Everett seems to be unsure of himself, falling back on the cliched mannerism of dauby brush strokes as a substitute for expressive facility and compositional nuance. Everett is obviously aiming to capture and express the innate mystery and resonance that lies in ordinary things, but instead we are more conscious of the mechanics of painting, of what one might call “bravura” style.

Also on display are selected prints by highly touted British painter Howard Hodgkin. Winner of last year’s prestigious Turner Prize and already recipient of two solo shows at London’s Tate Gallery, Hodgkin has divided critics right down the middle with his lush, sensuous compositions that combine the flat planar perspective of Matisse with the vibrant palette of Bonnard or Vuillard. Hodgkin’s work is essentially about mood, the capturing of sensations and essences from reminiscences of friends or places through nonfigurative means. His strength is clearly his exquisite use of color and economy of gesture. What is lacking is any sense of formal and emotional edge that pushes the work beyond mere decoration. On the evidence so far, one wonders what all the fuss is about. (Jan Turner, 8000 Melrose Ave., to Oct. 11.)