“People, Places and Things,” at the Gwydion...

“People, Places and Things,” at the Gwydion Gallery (7852 Fay Ave.) through Aug. 28, presents 33 works by 25 Southern California artists, including several San Diegans.

The show serves as an introduction to many artists who haven’t shown locally, a preview of artists having one or two-person shows at Gwydion this coming season--including Raul Guerrero, Deloss McGraw, Faiya Fredman and Mathieu Gregoire--and a reminder of the work of several artists who exhibited at the gallery last season.

As in any such conglomerate of textures, tones and tastes, the quality varies, and here it flirts with both extremes. At the positive end is Ernest Silva’s “Fallen Fire” (1984), a painted wood construction mounted on the wall like a three-dimensional painting. Its skeletal trees, defined by flickering red and yellow brush strokes, writhe like flames upon a purple and blue ground littered with the spent embers of other branches.

Matching Silva’s piece in terms of magical presence are the works of Robert Gil de Montes, McGraw and Gregoire. Montes renders a mysterious vision in his small oil painting on tin, “Nayarit Dream” (1987). A nude male figure stands at the center of a fiery red spiral with a large bird hovering before his chest, its wingspan supplanting his arms and shoulders. The whites of the man’s eyes gleam with a haunting curiosity from this strange and unfamiliar realm. McGraw offers magic of a playful, spirited variety in his “The Economy of the Home” (1987), a watercolor/pastel with the artist’s usual abundance of poetic charm. Gregoire opts for subtle, ethereal effect in his “Sky Box” (1987), an intimate refuge for the eyes and soul.

Evocative works by Fredman, Guerrero, Sam Erenberg, Anne Moore, Jeffrey Vallance, Claude Smith, Italo Scanga, Max DeMoss, Peter Mitten and Michael Cuddington are also included.

Other works by Richard Baker, Jane Lazerow, Carla Saunders, Steve Ilott, Kathleen Marshall, Merryl Berner Cicourel, David Newcomb, Tony Raczka, William Leavitt, Roy David Rogers and Cynthia Reeves Snow weigh down the show with either their heavy-handedness or facility.

The Natalie Bush Gallery’s (908 E St.) summer show, “Gallery Artists and Others,” through Aug. 15, also focuses on artists from Southern California, but it is a smaller, tighter selection than that at Gwydion.

This group of 10 works by 10 artists gives a strong sense of the gallery’s vision and direction toward art imbued with a strong spirit of formal experimentation. Within the works on display, there is no redundancy of media or technique; each artist explores the fringe of convention within a medium, but only a few succumb to the lure of unconventionalism for its own sake. The result is a lean, energetic exhibit that could stand only minimal trimming.

Two raggedly sleeved steel arms jut out from the wall in David Engbritson’s “Unseen Arm No. 2” to offer forth a limp, attenuated steel skeleton. The gesture is confrontational, yet mournful and poetic. The piece brings to mind Alberto Giacometti’s 1932 “Woman With Her Throat Cut,” another sculptural elegy that strikes at the gut.

Phyllis Green’s “Border” makes a more lyrical sculptural statement, contrasting a dark and rigid concrete form with a light, lithe, dancing twig. Both are perched on a small wall-mounted platform, as if performing a ballet of opposites. The work’s intimate scale and minimal forms reduce a human drama to its formal essence.

Deborah Lawrence contributes three amusing collages of confused, peopled environments made from color photocopies and other reproductions of monuments in the history of art and architecture. Elaine Le Vasseur renders a mellow landscape with an interesting combination of printing, linocut, watercolor and hand stitching, and Elena Siff’s “Alamogorodo,” a shallow box painting using sand, hair, dried flowers and metallic foil, is a gem of black humor. Other artists represented are Frank Cole, Daniel Britton, Randolph Sommer, Lynn Engstrom and Emmanuelle Cacciatore.

During this show only, gallery hours are Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. and by appointment.