Santa Monica

Cinema buffs will love the paintings of Arsen Roje. Using only the blued grays and whites found in black-and-white photos or old movies, Roje paints large works that duplicate classic film stills. We see a youthful Kirk Douglas as the arch private investigator interrogating the blonde in distress. Then there’s the 20-year-old Robert Mitchum entering a Casablanca boudoir to find Rosalind Russell preening at her vanity table.

The most interesting of the movie paintings are those that don’t slavishly copy movies but mysteriously crop or combine several stills into charged images, such as the picture of large hands opening a motel door in “Visitor” or the reeling female in “Leaving.” In general the movie theme seems a trivial and unnecessary hook when compared to a few finely worked and original subjects including a brooding self-portrait.

However much we pooh-pooh this kind of rehashed nostalgia, these paintings have the voyeuristic appeal of old snapshots and vintage movies; there’s a certain charm and release in seeing what was once considered steamy look so refreshingly innocent.

Marilyn Gelfman’s assemblages feature small hollow balls made from lapel pins, buttons, coins, rhinestones, plastic toys and other bric-a-brac. On the top of one sits a teeny wedding-cake bride and groom cleverly placed back-to-back in a post honeymoon stand-off; on another sits a glass doll. Successful pieces radio a preciousness and vulnerability, but Gelfman’s combinations of trinkets and classical figurines seem perfunctory. (Tortue Gallery, 2917 Santa Monica Blvd., to Feb. 3.)