Wilshire Center

Here’s an interesting case: a “Texas artist” trained at London’s Royal College of Art and affiliated with British Pop art of the ‘60s who became a conceptualist in the ‘70s and now paints Expressionistic oils. Who is the real Derek Boshier? At the moment, he’s a painter who teaches at the University of Houston and is having his first solo L.A. show.

We catch up with the British-born artist in an uncertain and not particularly inventive mode. He can be dreamy, caustic, worried or sly, but mostly he seems to be caught up in the fashion of the day. Despite the churned up surfaces and the apocalyptic air of acrid works like “City,” a much different sensibility lies underneath. A disconnected, Magritte-like Surrealism infiltrates this work, while shades of Pop hang over such iconic images and symbolic subjects as floating ladders, moons and figures in silhouette.

One particularly witty piece, called “Danger--Political Illusion,” stands out from the crowd by offering a cartoonish silhouette of Ronald Reagan’s head filled in with juicy red paint. Here the Neo-Expressionist style makes perfect sense as a Pop image gets an ‘80s face lift.

In the New Room, Holly Roberts exhibits genuinely spooky photographs so heavily painted that the original image is barely there. Her blurred, dreamlike pictures often deal with mythological overlays of human beings and animals--”Man Barking,” “Man With Horse Head” or “Child With Wolf.” Calling to mind powerful examples of Native American art, they strike at archetypal terror with a remarkably sure aim. (Fahey/Klein Gallery, 148 N. La Brea Ave., to April 9.)