Santa Monica

Photographer Jerry Burchfield’s Cibachrome mural-sized prints are enigmatic images that gently take on most of the issues and mind bending conundrums of modern society. Mildly political, they capture some of the disquiet of the modern psyche by offering an impression of the fear of death that haunts society within issues of abortion, ecology and random shootings.

Burchfield’s images are multi-paneled prints that result when the artist places various objects on photosensitized paper and outlines them with light. As brilliantly colored photograms, they weave poetic meaning from the visual clues of the odds and ends he assembles. Working like a phantom assemblage artist, Burchfield makes symbols that occasionally seem trite or get overly didactic--as in the pictorial cycle of obsolescence in “The User/Interium Final.” More evocative is the tension created by the shooting range target in the tree shaped crescents of “Abolishing Moonlight.” An interesting use of language in “Seven Progressive Steps,” a light drawing with cut out letter phrases, indicates the strength of the artist’s feel for ambiguous threat. It’s a promising direction. (Merging One Gallery, 1547 6th St., to Nov. 29.)