La Cienega Area

A catalogue essay on Fred Reichman’s work says his paintings are about daily existence. If so, it’s a blissful ambiance where pets snooze on a cot, birds perch on a wire and a coffee cup waits on a rickety gate. Everything is bathed in warm pink or pale blue, except on a rare rainy day when indoor light turns lemony yellow. The effect is cozy but distinctly uncrowded. A painting may depict nothing more than a moth or a collapsed umbrella; subjects are rarely anchored to a horizon, never constrained by perspective. Painted in flat color with fuzzy outlines, objects seem to float in a space so delicate that they might be an apparition.

Reichman’s loosely painted world and pastel palette puts one in mind of Milton Avery. Though Reichman paints interiors and exteriors almost interchangeably, he labors in the intimist tradition of Bonnard and Vuillard--if you can call this art labor. The paintings look so peaceful and ethereal that they might have been blown onto canvas from a soap bubble. That doesn’t make his work great art, just remarkably gentle painting that seems true to its instincts. (Mekler Gallery, 651 N. La Cienega Blvd., to Oct. 15.)--S.M.