Wilshire Center

The kinky curiosity that draws us to carnival oddities pulls us into paintings by Cuban-American artist Gloria Longval. She peoples canvases (and glazed ceramic fragments) with imperfect Everyfolks, their eyes a little too close, their mouths agape, their shabbily clothed bodies overly large or dwarfed. Longval has been mastering clay techniques and she moves swaths of paint as if carving gnomish boys holding Pierrot masks, or old draped women clutching secret parcels. Titles like “La Bruja” (The Witch) or “Magica” (Magic) put us in mind of exotic Latin rites, but these Gypsies and the icy tomb spaces they inhabit are interesting because they’re nondenominational; they could just as easily be menacing marauders from some “Road Warrior” epic.

Painter Sarah Brayer seems caught in some national schizophrenia. She’s an American who opts to live and work in Japan where she makes vaporous, nostalgic night views of New York’s suspended bridges. Brayer frequents Japanese paper mills in order to concoct her own blends of pulpy paper or linen. The spongy, home-grown surfaces let soft, grayed colors ooze and spread osmotically, a good technique for achieving churning bay waters and Brooklyn Bridge lights haloed in evening mist. (April Sgro-Riddle, 836 La Brea Ave., to June 11.)