BEVERLY HILLS

A Greek-born painter who has lived in the United States since 1973, Alexander Kritselis makes what he calls “Hellenic Mirages.” These dreamlike visions of childhood memories draw upon recurring images of the artist’s refugee grandmother, a war-torn country grappling with an uncertain future in contrast to its glorious past, and the role of the artist himself, as both symbolic salve for historical wounds and creator of fleeting, often unintelligible fragments.

One could interpret the work as a form of surreal nostalgia with redundant Neo-Expressionist overtones but Kritselis is careful to muddy an easy reading. Large canvases bulge into three-dimensional relief, subverting the integrity of the flat picture plane. Paintings are hinged away from the gallery wall, as if to suggest that deeper truths lie behind the shortcomings of the creative act.

Painted sculptures in bronze, wood and metal hover in an ambiguous conceptual space, partly parasitical to the paintings, partly independent. Kritselis blurs the border between their functions as memory fetishes and artworks. Such idiosyncrasies save Kritselis from sinking into the sort of expressionistic mannerism that usually dogs work of this kind. The work’s innate honesty saves it from sentimentality. (Stella Polaris, 445 S. Beverly Drive, to May 16.)