Santa Monica

In her “School of Velocity” paintings, Robin Palanker pursues one of the old lures in 20th-Century art: capturing the moments between significant actions, pinning down the look of pure motion. But the works--with their softly rounded forms and their muted grays and pinks--offer instead a reassuring kind of simplicity more closely identified with American regional artists of the 1930s. Part of the retro appeal of her work lies in its traditional, sometimes rural subject matter: a singer in a swirling pink dress about to settle into the curve of a baby grand; two women in long sundresses running (with backs to us) down a country road; two pigs rushing forward, ears flapping.

The title painting, depicting a soft-gray barn mounted on a circular track-like platform, looks a tad too Hopper-esque, although the curious platform provokes a weird, closed-circuit anxiety that is specifically Palanker’s. Her other images of houses--slightly blurred, perhaps as they would look to someone driving by--are disappointingly bland.

“I-5” is a medley of gray curves of highway seen from the soft grass below; an absurdly tranquil scene, really (not a car in sight) except for a slightly disquieting, abstract patch of red. In “BFO (Buffalo),” rows of dark tree trunks grow in a blue-white pad of snow against a pink sky. This image doesn’t in the least suggest a landscape seen from a plane (as the title would indicate). In fact, it dances with out-and-out triteness (trees in a winter sunset--are you kidding?). But somehow, because of the rhythm of the forms, it has the freshness of utter simplicity, honestly achieved. Speed, after all, isn’t everything. (Krygier/Landau Gallery, 2114 Broadway, to May 19.)