Wilshire Center

Los Angeles artist Gronk, whose work also appears in “Hispanic Art in the United States,” makes art that doesn’t overtly proclaim its ethnicity. It’s there, of course, in the angular patterning that activates both walls and skin. But there is more wailing human decadence to these paintings from the “Grand Hotel” series than belongs to any one culture.

In not too subtle terms, the hotel is hell. All the glitter, silk tuxedos and fancy carpets notwithstanding, there is a purgatorial, “No Exit” kind of energy to the place. The walls crawl with strange symbols and figures that seem to spill out unending stories of sin, private pain and madness. Not since the haunted resort in “The Shining” has a hotel seemed so powerfully possessed by the shame and crimes of those who dwell there.

Gronk’s animated brush work and glowing color gives the scenes an agitated and oppressive presence, but it is the work’s strange voyeuristic flavor that makes it so unsettling. The tight close-ups of the house detective and bellboy, the from-the-ceiling look at ballrooms and bedrooms all lend a frightening note of sneak-a-peek gratification.

Adding an uncomfortable but telling detail to the show, Gronk has painted a cardboard chandelier and hung it in the middle of the gallery. That simple device forcefully transforms the space into another limbo for the damned and gives the audience the uncanny sense of being spied on. (Saxon-Lee Gallery, 7525 Beverly Blvd., to March 4.)