WILSHIRE CENTER

Jim Morris generically titles his paintings “American History Sublime,” creating a cynically optimistic view of the universe where doubt and rationality vie with at least some hope of transcendence through the creative act. His early juxtaposition of color field panels with found photographs tended to fuse the spirituality of Rothko and the hard-edge aesthetic of Ellsworth Kelly with the more conceptual concerns of John Baldessari, producing an uneasy duality between the idea of the sublime and the elusiveness of its realization.

Morris’ latest landscape paintings are dark, at times almost indecipherable vistas that conjure up notions of Caspar David Friedrich’s Romantic treatises with all the light sucked out of them. The landscape as a vision of life force, God or spiritual salve is now firmly relocated to its conceptual role as symbolic wish-fulfillment.

Morris’ work alludes to photographic processes, color cue cards and the retinal effects of color buildup. More importantly, however, these works’ seductive lyricism creates its own sense of a fallen sublime.

In contrast, Heide Fasnacht’s black-painted wood sculptures are all raw aggression. Typical of many Post-Minimalist sculptors, Fasnacht mines the expressive qualities of her materials to evoke physical metaphors. She creates twisting, spiraling hollow forms that spin away from the wall or floor like encrusted cocoons or limbless animals. Initial impact quickly wanes, however, and we are left contemplating process and repetitive form. (Saxon-Lee, 7525 Beverly Blvd., to May 23.)