La Cienega Area

Bruce Richards’ new weather-vane paintings sure know which way the wind’s blowing. With his usual symbolic aplomb he looks at love, law, art and luck and comes to the unhappy conclusion that these much touted forces are prey to the whims and winds of popular opinion. Love is an arrow-shafted pointer capriciously turning in the morning breeze; law is blind justice--a fixed lightening rod for change that never moves; art and luck are fickle and spin in any direction.

Richards is an able realist painter with a strong feeling for the potent power of mundane objects to spill out witty narratives. Like Ed Ruscha, he has a particularly keen appreciation for Populist symbols, which he manipulates and alters within the painting. In “First Thought,” an apple with heart-shaped love bites becomes a biblical narrative with a set of underlying assumptions that ignite when placed next to the rounded, Venus of Willendorf fertility symbol.

Like a film director, Richards recognizes objects like burnt out matches and glass slippers as emblematic icons for thought and feeling. Simply by focusing tightly on the objects and aligning them with declarative titles he can unleash pent-up associations as entertaining as they are literal. Occasionally he gets carried away in the heart-shaped “Courtship” love letter envelopes. The envelope idea seems a bit labored, partly hiding a reproduction of a well known piece of art in envelopes ripped open in ways that suggest the imagery. But we still catch the reminder that in today’s art world images have become cultural icons, indistinguishable from their makers. (Hunsaker/Schlesinger, 812 N. La Cienega Blvd., to Dec. 23.)