VENICE

Riding high in pairs on gallery walls, Andrea Evans’ little (12-by-9-inch) paintings may be mistaken for Minimalist abstractions. But there are Indians lurking in these white-on-white canvases: the stoic faces of native Americans, of the sort depicted in Edward Curtis’ photographs. Evans has, in fact, reproduced photographic images, freezing them into shadows and reversing closely keyed “darks” and “lights” as she repeats a different face in each pair of paintings. This is conceptual art that builds on the well-worn ground of Andy Warhol’s Indian portraits and his commentary about the effects of commercial reproduction. Evans’ contribution is wise, however: She matches concept to image by remembering a disappearing race in disappearing paintings.

Brad Melamed is also a conceptualist who puts considerable effort into creating objects. Furthermore, he’s a word man. Formerly given to captioned paintings, he now wields colorful china markers as he draws realistic images and borders them on top and bottom with provocative word pairs. Fight and flight go with a careful rendering of a deer, ebb and flow with a rippling expanse of water, heed and ignore with an enlarged human ear.

In each of a dozen such poster-esque works, Melamed weds graphic clarity with enough subtlety to suggest alternate readings and an undertow of moral or ethical warning. Building up layers of color--gesturally in the images, cross-hatched in the word-borders--he invests these artworks with loving attention to detail while retaining an awkward edge of amateurish conviction. Whether enlarging an eyeball or reducing a natural vista, he tends to see it all as landscape--simultaneously fragile and forceful, complex and simple. The ambiguity suits this rather naive-looking art that has the good sense to pose questions instead of preaching a sermon. (Piezo Electric, 21 Market St., to May 16.)