Santa Monica

A large, sexually tinged, fantasy photo by L.A. artist Rafael Serrano kept good company in the “Avant Garde in the ‘80s” exhibition at the County Museum of Art in 1987. Currently he shows a dozen or so smaller Ektacolor photos in the same surrealist vein.

Serrano constructs miniature dioramas that look like desolate landscapes, barren river beds and Road Warriorish urban ruins scrawled with bizarre doodles of warheads. He photographs the teeny models under intense, dramatic light, controlling scale so that scenes come off as vast wastelands. Serrano takes full advantage of the incandescent color effects available to create photos that look like infrared post-Holocaust nightmares.

Serrano’s photos include shiny phallic totems. These lay prone and fragmented like fallen archeological debris, or they buttress futuristic architecture like the columns in temples dedicated to fertility, eros or physical prowess. Expertly lit, “Rio de Sangre” (River of Blood) is a serpentine gully tinted deep crimson that cuts its way through silvery blue river banks where bare shrubs, a military ship run aground and a broken sexual icon (or power totem--for Serrano these seem interchangeable) sit silently under fiery, apocalyptic skies. (B-1 Gallery, 2730 Main St., to Aug. 17.)