Wilshire Center

A surface of smooth plaster framed by thick planks of sanded but raw wood gives Douglas Metzler’s paintings a curiously ambiguous time line. The plaster tends to pitch the large paintings as ancient frescoes, but the refined crudity of the wide wood framing has the simple directness of an elegant folk art. However, it is the abstract quality of the body-oriented imagery masquerading as landscape that transcends time. The imagery creates a visual parity between humanity and nature that seems refreshingly new even if it is a venerable idea.

Metzler’s untitled images are deceptively simple. Ostensibly they are about the arch of a mountain or the sweep of a bit of sky. Yet we are caught repeatedly by the realization that tree trunks are torsos and white streaked skies are folds in a clinging garment. The images don’t simply suggest these realities. They are simultaneously both.

Occasionally Metzler’s parities get a bit romantically misty and we lose the connections between forms. The long-distance horizons in particular are like looking at washed-out Robert Morris sky-scapes minus the apocalyptic skeletal casts. But when image and frame come together, as they do in a dense grove of brown trees surrounded by the thick post and lintel planks, the pieces work up a nice dialogue on art’s ability to create and simulate reality. (Saxon-Lee Gallery, 7525 Beverly Blvd., to June 17.)