Santa Monica

Only the Lonely: Swiss artist Robert Indermaur’s brushy, figurative paintings are carefully choreographed, sometimes trite, narratives rooted in the loneliness of modern existence.

Most are pointedly contrived theatrical gambits where color is limited to brooding grays and compositions make heavy use of the cross as a signifier for heroic suffering. Figures in this psychological arena are humdrum people, dramatically isolated or united by feelings of fear and futility. As illustrations for oppression, the figures occasionally overcome the numbing powerlessness of their world. But as the wonderfully dense “Crowd I” makes clear, even good times are haunted by a sense of pain. There is something didactic and shallow in the way Indermaur’s figures reach for metaphor by pushing against walls or wander empty streets in surreal illustrations of angst. More penetrating are paintings where the facile brush work and the pathos of the stark figure weave their own allusions. “Head I” and “Time Indicator IV” forcefully whip paint around to both veil and reveal the tender core of humanity. It’s a subtext of strength in vulnerability that makes the props or stage sets in other paintings seem roaringly artificial and redundant. (Merging One Gallery, 1547 6th St., to March 8.)