WILSHIRE CENTER

Jay Phillips, who died earlier this week, was always admired as an artist who took risks. Few would dare to juxtapose abstract grids, candy stripes, polka dots and lattices with broad expressionistic flourishes and the patterned excesses of the Matisse-ian landscape and hope to make it jell, much less combine such gaudy, painterly bravura with three-dimensional sculptural relief.

When he was successful, Phillips managed to raise superficial extravagance to the level of formal elegance. When he failed, his work sank to the level of slick collectibles, just so much die-cut furniture “designed” for the decoration industry. The trouble with treading such a thin line between a genuine hybrid edge and fatuous kitsch is that one’s constantly forced to push each piece to its formal limits, lest formula creep in and reveal the work for what it really is: a contrived marriage of convenience between disparate styles with only sensuality as a common denominator.

Phillips’ latest painted aluminum wall and pedestal pieces (“dressers”) unfortunately fall into this trap, presenting a tired, familiar package that relies on repetitive dualities for its structural content and a combination of flashy surfaces and repressed Angst for its emotional impact. His hallmark cut-out, folded-back segments now seem predictable and cliched attempts to blur distinctions between the painterly and sculptural mise en scene , while the modernist allusions to Lichtenstein, Stella and the Fauves merely come across as throwaway signatures. What the work clearly needed was a reassessment of its formal parameters as well as a return to the material basics of both painting and sculpture, so that it could transcend its frustrating sense of deja vu and regain some of its lost ambiguity. Perhaps the vitality of this ambiguity is how Phillips should be remembered. (Roy Boyd Gallery, 170 S. La Brea Ave., to March 3.)