Wilshire Center

A two-person show pits the vintage heyday-of-Hollywood sensibility of international photographer Horst Horst against the ultra kinky Boy George aesthetic of local photographer Steven Arnold.

Since the 1930s Horst has produced high-fashion and fine-art photography for magazines such as Vogue and Vanity Fair. Black and white photos blend impressive compositional and tonal harmonies with a schmaltzy Marilyn Monroe-with-skirts-airborne staging. One shot frames a model’s sultry countenance in the abstract crinkles of her white head turban. Another creates a cascade of interwoven black and white hands and yet another plumbs the zany spirit of a youthful Salvador Dali.

Steven Arnold offers hermaphroditic extravaganzas where elaborately made-up nude males, females and mannequins (it’s hard to tell who’s who and what’s what) act out living tableaux culled from a subconscious mix of high sex, high religion and “high” art. There’s the dramatically choreographed male nude that Arnold describes as a “healer channeling” but who looks like just a well appointed stud strutting his stuff. There’s a supine nude chap veiled in fabric and dubbed the “Enlightened Prince.” And we can’t forget the bare chested ten-year-old girl in elaborate headgear called “Nautilus Goddess”.

Arnold’s last show possessed an undeniable visionary and technical directness. Works currently on view leave us feeling neither shocked nor moved, just manipulated, as Arnold objectifies every age and every sex with equal carelessness. (Fahey/Klein Gallery, 148 N. La Brea Ave., to June 30.)