Wilshire Center

The sequin encrusted “functional” objects (chairs, boxes, chests) and paintings of Rhonda Zwillinger occupy an aesthetic crevice somewhere between Cindy Lauper and the Fauves. Inexpensive, gaudy rhinestones, ceramic buttons, fake shells and hundreds of tiny glass rods arranged like spiky halos surround moody, arbitrarily hued scenes of cityscapes, Ed Ruscha skies, and romantic solitary trees.

Zwillinger spearheaded the East Village phenomenon and its anti-high-art, hypocrisy-busting stance lingers. “To Treasure” queries notions of preciousness in art and life. It’s a lovely, liquid bridge scene that recalls Andre Derain. Around it is a dizzying but perfectly composed array of plastic beads, baubles and glass grapes. Here Zwillinger uses excess to parody social excesses; the precious and common have interchangeable identities. “Apostrophe: Searching for Godot,” with its ‘50s car and broad, heartland skies addresses the age’s love of sentimentality. Another tiny Technicolor cliche scene of Marc Antony ravaging Cleo speaks to our dependence on media as a sedating definer of fake realities.

Concurrently Mark Norris offers spare, open-ended canvases coupling gestural fields punctuated with small, barely decodable photos. Added to centers and corners, the photos don’t look collaged but veiled by pigment, and our inclination toward parsimony makes neat narratives of basically innocuous abstraction and imagery. In one work a vortex of gestures corrals a photo of what looks to be a nuclear mushroom cloud and four nostalgic baseball photos. Boyish and jaded, the work presents the freshness of the American dream only to show it souring in the sun. Norris’ sharp, clever written treatise similarly hits on the foibles of the art scene, man’s inanity and inevitable senescence.(Fahey/Klein Gallery, 148 N. La Brea Ave., to Oct. 15.)