SANTA MONICA

Michele Zalopany’s big black-and-white drawings of interiors are rather like old movie stills without the people. Whether light forces itself through windows of velvety black chambers--as in “The First,” depicting a wood-paneled room that might be a men’s club--or drenches over-decorated bedrooms, these pictures register as views of reality seen through the distance of time or through multiple stages of reproduction. They have the feel of paintings done from photographs of situations that are themselves simulations. A peculiar drawing of two swans pulling a woman across a lake in a shell-like carriage seems to be sheer fantasy, but it shares the prevailing tone of a world deserted--or vaguely remembered.

All that said, it seems odd that Zalopany’s drawings are neither nostalgic nor sentimental. Though the rooms are variously laden with collectible decor, the artist isn’t out to make us care about the furnishings. As the rooms fill up with tables, chairs, cushions, drapes, chandeliers and paintings, they seem to empty themselves of content. Meaning resides in unappealing objects that appear quite meaningless.

So why do we continue looking at these strange drawings? Partly because they are strange, but--more important--because they engage us in mental conversation about the kinds of meanings we routinely ascribe to stone cold objects.

The only problem with pursuing this subject is that it forces us to see contradictory, disorienting aspects that seem more clumsy than intentionally “bad.” The most obvious example is in a work called “The Bedroom” where an illusionistic pattern on the carpet coils out of the picture, the foot of the bed is oddly tilted and the pleated spread seems to be blowing in a breeze that has no business on a bedroom floor. Such distractions are beside the point, but they effectively end an otherwise intriguing discourse.(HoffmanBorman Gallery, 912 Colorado Ave., to June 20.)