Wilshire Center

F. Scott Hess’ nightmare visions of society teetering on the edge of madness and violence have mellowed a bit. All the usual devices are in place, but they seem less hallucinatory. It’s not the lusciously painted ground that’s changed. It still heaves like the deck of a sinking ocean liner. Skin tones remain bruised with the muscular swelling of a fresh welt. Yet in these paintings the feeling is less of some impending, awesome violence and more a festering anxiety.

The social dynamics Hess investigates this time out include a frontal, pastel image of an accidental shooting by good old boys messing around with guns in the Badlands and a man furtively turning away from a bluff overlooking a peaceful suburb. These genre scenes are still potent, with carefully orchestrated compositions, but the lighting is less theatrical. The bright light of day and a more realistic representation effectively mutes the scene’s latent paranoia, going instead for uncertain disquiet.

Hess’ characters too are a little less disagreeable. While still physically twisted by their social malaise, there is more humanity to their monstrosity. In the ominous “The Night,” we are repelled by the subtle forces of incest at work on a family eating dinner in front of the television set. In “Attic Icon,” an energetic freeform canvas, a youth swings a baseball bat in delusions of power that overwhelm his worried parents’ ability to cope or control. Like Leon Golub, Hess is keeping his finger on the scariest part of being human--the realization that we are our own worst enemies. (Ovsey Gallery, 126 N. La Brea Ave., to May 20.)