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Santa Monica

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New York artist David Humphrey’s surrealist paintings seem to come from a besieged public official’s dream time. The images are strange yet make a weird kind of sense, as if the floating gaseous bladders, winged bells and formal gardens were all just unconscious symbols of an individual trying to deal with a too-complex civic responsibility. The style is a strangely serene mix of Magritte fantasy joined to a smooth, body-oriented, organic abstraction. The result is an unreal, highly symbolic world of distended viscera and odd bits of recognizable reality.

The paintings are powerful, both in the way they are painted and in the symbolism that stays just outside of comprehension. Humphrey adds to the fray by spelling out the titles in disjointed lettering right on the canvases. This technique, suggesting the additive nature of collage, also mirrors his own slightly out of kilter means of communication that obscures as much as it reveals. Ultimately, however, it is the nagging sense that something vital is being addressed that makes deciphering the images seem important. (Krygier/Landau Contemporary Art, 2114 Broadway, to June 30.)

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