Wilshire Center

Frank Ramirez’s appalling, fascinating images of S&M; saints, archangels and stigmatized nuns probe the emotionally spongy area between spirituality and sexuality.

Even when the artist leaves the hot coals of religion to tread on the less inflammatory world of politics or art history, as he does in “Homage to Carreno de Miranda,” he is drawn to the spoiled sensuality of his subject. She is rendered as a square, broad little princess with a puffy, smoldering petulance and satin clothes. “The Ambassador’s Native Girlfriend” is a Playboy pin-up crowned with a sophisticated mourning veil whose refined pose for the state portrait is undermined as much by her glamour-girl makeup as by the artist’s rendition of her naked to the waist.

These are uncomfortable paintings that assault the barriers of convention. They reek of excess and bodily infatuation from a decidedly male perspective. Painted in color-intense egg tempera, these portraits of women who are both whores and Madonnas ooze with the tainted fertility of overripe cantaloupe. (Ivey Gallery, 154 N. La Brea Ave., to Nov. 12.)