Wilshire Center

A thick, circus-bright color band surrounds a large white rectangle applied with toothy swipes of a tile grouting tool in Norton Wisdom’s newest paintings. Dense singular slashes of pure purple, red, yellow and green aggressively outline space, fighting the ribbed texture of the white ground for attention. In the middle of the rectangle floats a smaller irregular rectangle made of more primary colors tied by quick charcoal lines to the corners of the larger shape. This smaller box and its four black umbilical cords creates a loose, angular, bull’s-eye format that suggests a perspective drawing of a gaudy edged interior space.

In the spirit of minimalist Sol Lewitt, Wisdom has shown rectangle-tethered-within-rectangle images for more than 10 years now; continually playing within the narrow confines of these few lines with the dynamics of the form and the expressive potential of the paint. Wisdom brings assured paint handling to this batch of paintings and is so offhandedly comfortable within the reworking of the abstract form that it would seem appropriate to find the paint still wet on the canvas. (Richard/Bennett Gallery, 332 1/2 N. La Brea Ave. Ends Nov. 12.)