Acevedo Gallery Internacional (4010 Goldfinch St.) has...

Acevedo Gallery Internacional (4010 Goldfinch St.) has covered its walls in a handsome installation of selected works by San Diego-based artist Gary Hansmann from the series “The Dream Sleep.”

Hansmann is a contemporary enthusiast of things Spanish, and his works convey the somber quality that we traditionally associate with Spain. In one work he has written, “I have drunk the blood of Spain.”

More than that, there is a strong resemblance to the works of Mexico-born artist Jose Luis Cuevas, probably the result of the same influences, including Old Masters such as Goya, Picasso, Rembrandt and Leonardo.

Hansmann’s works are intense, intimate, moving and beautiful works of art that evince his masterfulness as a draftsman and his sensitivity as a colorist.

The artist’s concern is the human condition, and his subjects are exclusively human figures. Typically, however, he distorts their noses so that they resemble the snouts of animals. He may also elongate their ears to resemble those of an ass.

Mean-spirited and surly, they represent what we traditionally regard as least attractive in our civilization. Nevertheless, Hansmann’s mastery of line and color is such that we cannot help but admire the beauty of these ugly but seductive images.

Hansmann, a poet as well as a visual artist, customarily includes texts in his drawings. In “Viva Lorca” appear the lines, “When you see a poet die you know silence will follow. Life has no pleasure without birds to sing.”

The disappointments in the show are the paintings in oil, which lack the authority of the smaller works on paper.

Nevertheless, Hansmann seems to be a natural artist, one for whom it is as natural to make art as it is to breathe. He feels the pain of existence intensely and conveys it with poetic immediacy.

The exhibition continues through Nov. 15.

While Hansmann is concerned with existential pain, San Diego photojournalist Robert Service is concerned with the real pain, physical and psychological, that people are now suffering in Chile.

Sushi (852 8th Ave.) is exhibiting 42 black-and-white photographs that Service made during a trip to Chile from November through April. The artist, whose purpose is to try to educate the American people about what is happening to the south, has said, “(Chilean President Augusto) Pinochet fears that international exposure of state violence will destroy his projected image of Chile as a communist-busting bastion of the free world.”

Many of the images are horrendous, others are heart-rending: Police officers in riot-control garb battle protesting citizens. The faces of mothers alternate with the images of their missing children appearing on hand-carried placards. A shoeshine boy writhes in a cloud of “Morning Teargas.”

There are also scenes of ordinary life: a fish peddler, a vegetable stall, children at play.

And there are crowds of Pinochet supporters.

It is astonishing and admirable that in such a repressive society many citizens will take to the streets to protest what they perceive as unjust.

Service’s photographs may not be artistic but they are moving human documents. Consider, for example, a crowd of middle-aged women carrying a banner marked “Mothers Against Torture.”

The exhibition continues through Nov. 8.

Spectrum Gallery (744 G St.) is showing works by Myra Boecker-Woodward and Juanita Lowe.

Boecker-Woodward uses the guitar for its formal visual characteristics as well as for its evocation of music. In drawings, paper cut-outs, constructions and paintings on canvas, guitars appear in a variety of representations, ranging from realistic to abstract.

The most effective are the large, textured paintings in high-key colors titled “Music Box” and “Visual Harmony.”

Lowe’s oil paintings of biomorphic shapes tend toward visual flaccidity, but “Garden Shapes” and “Earth Blues” evince some muscularity.

The exhibition continues through Nov. 1.

Perspectives Gallery (835 G St.) is showing photographs and ceramic pots by Gordon Middleton.

Among the photographs, the most distinguished are those closest to pure abstraction, as in “Locked Gate,” “Weathered Hinge,” “Rings” and “Chains.” “Door No. 2” is handsomely minimalist.

The exhibition continues through Oct. 31.