LA CIENEGA AREA

Wade Hoefer conjures a land stricken with a terrible enchantment in strange paintings pulsating with the diseased beauty of movies by David Lynch. Soft, undulating landscapes awash with a burnished glow reminiscent of a WPA mural depicting workers harvesting wheat at dusk, Hoefer’s pictures are devoid of human life, populated instead by alien life forms resembling large walnuts.

There’s something inexplicably macabre and distinctly sexual about these forms, which sometimes take on the character of all-knowing oracles, other times seem like malignant growths. Employing a palette heavy on mold green, mustard and rust, Hoefer sets his Surreal compositions in deep renaissance space that invests them with the intense weight of a nightmare one struggles to forget. They’re beautifully painted pictures, disturbing yet oddly compelling. (Asher/Faure, 612 N. Almont Drive, to Nov. 8.)