The Valley

Mexican-American artist Mario Castillo packs his paintings with profusion. They strike an uneasy truce between Western and Latin American and culture.

Small canvases feature a centrally placed corridor vaguely suggesting a narrow hallway or a temple chamber. Odd spaces recede with believable depth. In and around this hall motif, Castillo floats a dizzying array of blue hand prints and pictographs of pre-Columbian fecundity symbols. All this competes with a maelstrom of zigzagging marks in the bright teals, jades, and pinks we’ve come to associate with Latino art.

It’s clear these works are personal journeys, and that Castillo is trying to create and locate himself within a visual history that blends pre-Columbian and Western traditions. There’s a pull-out-all-the-stops personal investment and a sincere ethnic consciousness to the work, but the artist takes on too much territory, covers it too quickly and ends up seeming scattered and manic. (Orlando Gallery, 14553 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, to Dec. 29.)