Santa Monica

L.A. artist Matthew Thomas paints flat, matte rectangles in the neutral tones of geometric abstraction and then selectively textures surfaces with materials like mud, clay, poured wax and sand added to acrylic paint. In “Essential Ground,” two panels abut to make a vertical abstract color field composition. The upper, rust-toned panel has a gritty finish that looks like the earth’s ridged and bumpy topography seen from a great distance. In the lower panel, Thomas uses what looks like blanched clay that’s been mixed with paint, applied in varying thicknesses and then allowed to dry and crack to create the appearance of a parched riverbed viewed at very close range.

In the three paneled piece, “Plane Landscape,” an uninflected black field implies some vast cosmic space with the help of diagrammatic lines of the sort used by astronomers to chart the heavens. The neighboring panel in neutral beige has the faintest suggestion of pitted ridging and calls up an aerial view of an arid valley. The final panel uses ground-up, then painted-on porcelain clay to reproduce the brittle surface of a cracked stoneware artifact or a fragment of desert architecture fissured by time. (Ultima Gallery, 2105 Main St., to Dec. 29.)