LA CIENEGA AREA

A fundamental optimism underlies Matt Mullican’s dry-looking art: a belief that it’s possible to understand and codify the whole cosmos, and to achieve self-realization in the process. That sounds like an old-fashioned ticket to disaster, but Mullican achieves a striking balance between contemporary awareness of communication overload and a timeless search for meaning.

He has assigned colors to separate spheres: red for subjective matters, yellow for the arts or “the world framed,” blue for ordinary activities or “the world unframed,” green for nature, black for signs and language. His imagery is a blend of history and invention that often emulates the streamlined style of international symbols; his methods (in this show, mostly rubbings of reliefs that he has constructed) suggest both grainy reproductions and memories or actual objects.

Mullican’s current solo exhibition relates to his works in “The Spiritual in Art” at the County Museum of Art and “Individuals” at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The centerpiece, a huge, multi-panel piece called “History Over Opera House Surrounded by Signs,” has a red half-circle filled with images of “the history of the world” (Sputnik, the Eiffel Tower, McDonald’s golden arches) centered above a yellow Paris Opera House, while black side sections hold circles containing silhouettes of such things as musical signs, an hourglass, a typewriter and cutlery.

A couple of granite panels contain Mullican’s schemes for “Anatomy” and a “City Plan.” In the back gallery, a cycle of red canvas panels addresses such basic issues as life and death, heaven and hell in symbolic motifs encased in circles.

While all of this requires decoding, the work is quite accessible. Mullican doesn’t do much more than name components of the world, its trappings and the forces that shape it, but his system is so personalized that it doesn’t feel indifferent. (Kuhlenschmidt/Simon Gallery, 9000 Melrose Ave., to Feb. 22.)