WILSHIRE CENTER

An Israeli artist at mid-career, Yudith Levin makes paintings on scraps of discarded plywood scavenged in the streets of Tel Aviv. Filtering allegorical scenes typical of Renaissance art through the fractured reality of Cubism, Levin relies on viewers’ familiarity with the Modernist vocabulary to fill in the blanks of her crudely executed paintings.

Having the appearance of the damaged remains of demolished artworks, Levin’s work converts the wall itself into a picture plane. Hunks of wood function as brushstrokes, and Levin defines the parameters of a given painting by grouping raggedy shards of lumber in careful relation to one another--thus inviting the viewer to fit the pieces together in the shape of a story. Levin offers a second set of clues by slathering the wood with bold passages of color that sometimes amount to nothing more than Abstract Expressionist bravado, and other times take the form of figures, landscapes or constellations.

While Levin explored biblical themes in previous work, sex seems to be the subject at hand here. In “Beginning of a Day” we see two figures sleeping as the sun rolls into view on a hunk of wood positioned far to the right. “Inside” is composed of two nude forms separated by a swirling, spherical void, while “Surroundings” is a landscape whose horizon line reads like the earth’s outline one moment, the profile of a reclining form the next. They’re rather tender paintings; at the same time, they never let you forget that they’re of the street and can get tough when they need to. (Turske & Whitney, 962 N. La Brea Ave., to April 30.)