Santa Monica

Scenes From Suburbia: Back in the ‘50s, when members of the Bay Area Figurative school looked to the everyday world for subject matter, they tuned up color, flattened objects, revved up the play of curves and angles. On the East Coast, Fairfield Porter used a rich, painterly palette to deliver understated treatments of quiet domestic events. But without a distinctive point of view, “everyday” realism risks looking like so much stale white bread.

Adam Schnitzer, a young artist from the Valley who now works in the gentlemanly artistic climate of Palo Alto, paints scenes from suburbia--streets of neat houses and parked cars, a woman at a sunny breakfast table, a view from a window, interiors where TVs and sneakers and family photos mingle with the quietly tasteful furniture. Schnitzer applies color in light, loose strokes; the spines of a row of books read as skinny trails of paint, autumnal trees wear a spongy cloud of brown; faces are virtually blank and featureless.

He fails to take control of his subject matter, which is a different thing from simply assembling it into a pleasing composition. His view of the world seems neither particularly loving nor critical but vacant and neutral--superficial, as opposed to the kind of cool neutrality that can be stylistically interesting. For the most part, it appears to be an attempt to summon up the sensory qualities of a particular locale using only bland, generalized visual cues. (Tatistcheff Gallery, 1547 10th St., to Feb. 17.)