WILSHIRE CENTER

With their medley of colors and their tidy arrangements of geometric elements, Jeff Falsgraf’s “Dance Series” paintings look like elaborate plans for designer rugs. The raw canvas even seems to give the color a softer, depth-creating texture.

To be sure, there are things happening here that yearn to be part of the New Abstraction. Paint keeps wandering just a bit beyond the borders. Rows of uneven horizontal black lines meander through some geometric shapes and others are texturally inflected with small, choppy strokes.

But it’s all too pat and self-conscious, and the existence of a whole series on this theme only reinforces its essential sterility. Lita Albuquerque’s recent series of paintings on paper--black silhouettes of mountains and gorges erupting in bursts of iridescent color or mutely witnessing a brilliantly exploding galaxy--is also on view. (Richard Green Gallery, 830 N. La Brea, to Sept. 14.)