Hollywood

Alan Wayne’s all-black paintings are tough and uncompromising art-about-art investigations of painting. Though they recall Ad Reinhardt’s all-black paintings and the subtle dynamism of Robert Ryman’s formal investigations, they have a particular energy that is all their own.

Each painting is actually an arrangement of three canvasses, two of which are joined vertically to form one solid black block. A smaller third canvas hovers some feet away, detached but dogmatically part of the arrangement. Superficially identical, each untitled grouping toys differently with the geometry of the canvas.

While the joined canvasses change from being rectangular to square, the smaller detached canvas go through similar, but seldom parallel, changes. Color is also subtly different on each grouping, appearing slightly yellow, green or blue with extended viewing.

Staring at the dark blankness of each painting is disconcerting. Desperate for imagery and color the eye begins to see flecks of whiteness glimmer around the perimeter of each painting. Then flashes of red, green or blue appear like broad retinal brush strokes across the surface of the painting.

However, the surface is always uniformly matt black and completely unmarked. The brief impression of gesture and color may be a trick of mind and eye stimulated by the emptiness of the painting, but there is a keen sense that swaths of color do underlie the dense blackness. If the effect is strictly illusion Wayne’s paintings might be aligned with the subliminal light investigations of artists like Eric Orr or James Turrell. But if those color strokes are really there, unexpectedly apparent for brief moments, that’s perceptual magic. (Newspace, 5241 Melrose Ave., to Dec. 2).