Wilshire Center

Judy Coleman’s photographic evocations of the female body seen within immense, enveloping environments of thin scratchings and twining filaments have metamorphosed during the past year into similarly obscured close-ups of her averted face. These pieces have a pronounced narcissistic component, as if the artist’s face--which, with its closed eyes, generally suggests either sexual pleasure or sleep--were inevitably filled with grave and subtle meaning.

Indeed, she writes that her concentration on the face is related to her interest in “the phenomenon of memory and the complexity of emotional response to it.” Granted the visual associations between the twining filaments and “gray matter,” it’s hard to see the connection between Coleman’s attractively posed, stylized images and the function of memory. Perhaps because it doesn’t concentrate exclusively on her face--because it depends more on abstract volumes than on hoped-for psychological penetration--her portfolio of six images of the sleeping self is more absorbing.

Other work seems to carry on a flirtatious dialogue with art history. For “Renaissance Head,” Coleman artfully flattens her profiled face. For “Sanctum,” she poses gracefully in a central rectangular area studded with jewel-like bits of glass like the cover of an illuminated manuscript. In “Conjugation of Silence,” the head on her armless body has the unreal look of an ancient, weathered sculpted image. And in “Veil of Silence” the surprise of teeth and a pair of askew eyes emerging from a glistening web of threads is reminiscent of Dada tricks. (G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, 7224 Melrose Ave., to Jan. 6.)