La Cienega Area

An amiable orange cat named Ginger greets exhibition visitors and massages their ankles. The real feline is the perfect familiar for a light summer show of pastels by Peter Alexander. The local master is utterly amused and easy in images of chartreuse bunnies, haughty roosters and a puzzled ostrich. He wanders house and patio, drawing flowers cut from the garden and stuck in glasses of water. There are a few of his bravura sunsets but rendered in artificial colors that wink and say they are just summer spectaculars made of pastel ice cream.

The show is so much fun, so seductive, that you don’t want to get any more serious than it does. If you manage that, the news is also good. Alexander has come to the place where there is virtually no separation between the thing depicted and the mark he makes to show it. If he says that mark is a feather, it’s a feather. If he says that mark is a petal, it’s that. Reminds you of the way David Hockney can convince us an arabesque line is a reflection on a pool. Alexander is Hockneyesque in his easy command of imagery, but where Hockney locks down on form, Alexander loves the airy. His world is all down, vapors and light. (Gallery 454 North, 454 N. Robertson Blvd., to Aug. 10.)