SANTA MONICA

Back in the mid ‘70s, Jack Barth, David Deutsch and David True lived in the same Manhattan building, each painting idiosyncratic landscapes that shared a visionary bond. The three are reunited in an extremely spotty group show that supplements work from this period with paintings and drawings from the early ‘80s.

Barth is by far the most interest-ing, exploiting the contradictions between Romanticism and skepticism in order to create vistas that are paeans to both unbridled natural forces and man’s conniving manipulation. Monochromatic juxtapositions of Constable landscapes and fragmented views of Central Park are rendered in a muddy concoction of oil paint, charcoal and woodblock print, as if to suggest that modern-day notions of the sublime exist as much from learned mechanical processes as any intrinsic act of God-given faith.

Deutsch is represented by a mediocre drawing of a summer retreat in Maine (the building looks like it’s emerging out of some primeval chaos) and a single painting from 1985 called “Planetarium Cutaway.” Loosely rendered in Deutsch’s habitual sombre palette, the work depicts the interior of a planetarium, except that the usual projected night sky has been replaced by a collection of Old Master paintings. The work’s allusions to 19th-Century atelier genres as well as modern technology/cosmology seems to be an attempt to exploit the historical and semantic gamesmanship that Mark Tansey pulls off so effectively, but Deutsch is betrayed by both poor technique and trite symbolism.

True’s stormy landscapes, with their undulating planes, exaggerated colors and hard edges are strikingly rendered, yet one can’t help feeling that all this compositional bluster is but a smoke screen for a lack of real ideas. (BlumHelman, 916 Colorado Ave., to Sept. 5.)