LA CIENEGA AREA

Ryu Okabayashi has lived and exhibited in Japan. The artist came here in 1984 and, from the looks of a current show, leans aesthetically to the West. On view are colorful, happy works that fall into the new painting/sculpture hybrid spearheaded by Elizabeth Murray. In these confetti-like works, slashes of bright paint and bits of projecting wood summon up scenes of the seaside and woods. The sun is translated into literal bands of bright yellow wood and clouds are tiny wood ovals highlighted with black outlines that extend onto the flat canvas. Beyond their perhaps too likeable ease, the works are most successful at generating and then unifying entropic, fractured surfaces.

William Padien is such a natural, lush and seductive colorist that his work stands the risk of being called too pretty. He paints layer upon layer of glistening oil pigment on very thin paper, randomly torn. The paper is attached to canvas and the result is beautifully hued and gestural surfaces that are, well, pretty. By layering and tearing, Padien pulls off shifts in depth that move both toward the viewer and into the picture plane. At the edge of some pieces he includes little shelves where heaps of colored pigment have collected, presumably in the course of making the work. These unnecessarily compete for our attention and seem like heavy handed reminders that art is process and ritual and not just a pretty face. (Gallery 454, 454 N. Robertson Blvd., to Sept. 12.)