WILSHIRE CENTER

Judy Rifka’s work has changed radically since the 1970s, when she was noted for distinctive minimal paintings on plywood. Since becoming involved in the East Village “scene,” she has taken a quantum leap backward by resorting to the overwrought quotational mannerisms of Neo-Expressionist figuration. This is particularly evident in a recent series of shaped, three-dimensional canvases featuring classical nude caryatids and fruit baskets. Depicted in stylized poses, the caryatids are rendered in bright colors using short, kinetic brush strokes--as if Matisse’s palette, Cezanne’s fractured line and Guston’s muscular simplicity were fused together in an orgy of bulging, fleshy sensuality.

The result is redundant overkill, in which the works’ sculptural and architectural characteristics act more as a trite diversion from Rifka’s innate lack of painterly originality. This is a contrived, New York graffiti revamping of Mediterranean classicism, where brashness and inflated scale are offered as a superficial counterbalance to moribund style. Yet another attempt to revive the discredited rhetoric of representational painting, these works have little critical justification in the 1980s.

Much the same could be said of Christopher Pelley’s “Narrative Paintings.” These pseudo-realist still lifes and landscapes in heavy, faux -marble classical frames attempt to revive the allegorical didacticism of Renaissance altarpieces. By using enigmatic metaphors and symbols to give the impression of an open text, Pelley tries to make us believe we’re decoding the scenario ourselves. Instead, we are more aware of Pelley’s heavy-handed manipulation of luminist painterly techniques and trompe l’oeil effects for their own sake, as if the “aura” of high art historicism were ample compensation for a lack of structural innovation. Like Rifka, Pelley merely reinforces painterly myths under the guise of seemingly de-mystifying them. (Saxon-Lee Gallery, 7525 Beverly Blvd., to March 14.)