LA CIENEGA AREA

Things are a bit wavy and woozy in pictures by Mark Lipscomb. For his first one-man exhibition, this young L.A. artist shows sensual landscapes of suburban roads that seem to shrink and swell with the hallucinatory glee of a Max Fleischer cartoon. Exploring the blurred reality we see from a moving automobile, Lipscomb’s acrylic pictures depict a world gone soft and strange. Things rush silently by outside the window glass and we slip into a dream.

Painted in and around Silverlake, his work is awash in the muted lyricism of the Bay Area Figurative School, and it comes as no surprise to discover that he studied at the San Francisco Art Institute. At the same time, this is clearly the work of a Southern California painter. Perfectly tended housing tracts serve as the backdrop for an unending network of undulating highways where there’s not a soul to be seen.

Man’s concrete thumbprint is everywhere in Lipscomb’s work, yet the pictures are devoid of human presence. This lends them a sense of crushing isolation amid overwhelming space. People who’ve yet to discover the rhythm of Los Angeles often describe the place in similar terms. (Hunsaker/Schlesinger Gallery, 812 N. La Cienega Blvd., to March 21.)