La Cienega Area

Sandow Birk makes surprising paintings using acrylic paint on black velvet. Surprising because they can be interesting, despite immediate associations with cheap Tijuana bullfighter pictures. Even though they lack Peter Alexander’s aplomb in dealing with the same material, the calculated unease of the images holds our attention. It’s a weirdly evolving mixture of street kitsch and Edward Hopper isolation.

Birk uses velvet to mimic the light-absorbing canvas of night. He paints emotional darkness, as seen in artificially bright airport waiting rooms or speeding cars glimpsed in rear view mirrors. The paintings are gaudy with cheap-thrill tail lights and cobweb lamp effects, but it’s a premeditated sort of tackiness. In sum they give the blurry but naggingly familiar sensation of being an alien in your own land.

The work falls apart when it reaches too hard to tie a reason to all that disquiet. We don’t need the row of empty vodka bottles lined up above a painting of an all night drive-through. Birk is strongest when he leaves the individuals to weave their own cocoons in cars and waiting areas, without extraneous props.

Birk’s night scenes contrast sharply with Ellen Adler’s traditional still-life painting. Fruit on tilted tables pay heavy-handed homage to Cezanne, Manet and other Impressionist masters. It’s the same old ground even if the glass bottles and apples with plates are nicely arranged and painted. A rosy hue mutes everything in pink. It’s unclear if this is an intentional comment on fine art gone to seed as interior design or if Adler simply likes seeing things though rose colored glasses. (Earl McGrath Gallery, 454 N. Robertson Blvd., to Sept. 8.)