LA CIENEGA AREA

German artist Klaus Rinke reminds us how heartily sick we grow of art that refuses to take itself seriously. On the face of it, Rinke’s closely hung spread of 35 works pursues honorable themes of alchemy and the awesome fecundity of nature. Basically these are biomorphic abstract paintings distinguished by particularly odd, tortured shapes and extreme color schemes that skid from somber gray-on-gray compositions to pushy, sneering couplings of screaming yellows and greens.

So far, so good. It even comes off well when he combines paintings with real seashells or rocks that seem to have been spit on the floor with the same random, mindless wisdom Nature pursues in her unceasing experiments with life forms.

Then come wise-guy titles like “Universal Sunglasses for the Infinite Molecular Chain Reaction,” and one realizes that this style of assumed hipness--which also shows in certain confused overtones in the work--lacks even the minor heroism of dandified detachment. Here is an intense, old-fashioned fetishism, a decorative sense that is like a German version of Matisse’s cutouts, and an authentic--almost religious--awe at the force of nature. Rinke settles on none and so makes work that contradicts itself into uneasy neutrality. (James Corcoran Gallery, 8223 Santa Monica Blvd., to Jan. 23.)