Santa Monica

There aren’t any valleys or peaks in the nine-person show, “The Abstract Image,” just a steady, somewhat enervated middle ground. Well known local artist Craig Antrim shows a large canvas with his favorite house shape rendered in warm beiges beefed up with chalky white wax and invaded by phallic squiggles. Carl Reed whose one person shows of large quasi-functional wood and metal sculptures have charmed us, is represented by an unusually humdrum entry that balances a vertical wood shaft on a log shaped base.

Michael Brangoccio offers a large collage and pigment piece that builds a rugged, almost weathered plaster field, accented by bits of silver and traversed by a dark cruciform. Eileen Senner shows a free-standing vertical pod made from some hardened paper-like material that’s been painted and scraped to look like dusty, organic detritus. Brock Klein lays down layers of carefully orchestrated color then burns them off with what could be a blow torch to make “Return.”

A colorful canvas by Stephen Greene is the least allusive geometry here and it lacks bite, while a floor-standing metal and glass sculpture by Stephen Kafer lies a little close to campy Italian furniture design. Michel Alexis makes a two-paneled tribute to Gertrude Stein; the lower panel is flowered linen, the upper a sultry grayed field inscribed with the barely readable repeating phrase, “a rose is a rose is a rose is...” Finally, Joshua Rose’s “Jack and Jill” is a huge canvas dominated by twin shapes that look like enormous cell masses--one in dense, rich blues, the other in greens--careening out in space. (Ruth Bachofner Gallery, 926 Colorado Ave., to Dec. 30.)