ART REVIEWS : Making Some Sense Out of the Universe With Alfred Jensen

“My father is strong and good because he paints solar energy,” Alfred Jensen’s son once wrote in a school essay. Solar energy wasn’t the half of it. A perpetual student of obscure systems of knowledge, Jensen researched ancient numerological systems, color theory and physics in order to make sense of the world. His art was a painstakingly constructed allegory of a harmonious universe.

Jensen filled large canvases with patterns of small, tactile squares of color squeezed right from the tube. Frequently, row upon row of neatly aligned numerals and terse, mysterious remarks in flowing script slice through the pillows of paint.

The centerpiece of a show of Jensen’s work from the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s at Linda Cathcart Gallery, “Seeking to Unravel the Shape of an Enzyme,” extends 15 feet in length. Its rows of mathematical formulas are piled on top of each other to create a dense embroidery of impenetrable evidence.

Although Jensen, who died in 1981, shares the nutty obsessiveness of some folk artists, he was well aware of the art of his time--he showed with some of the Abstract Expressionists--and studied briefly with theoretical painter Hans Hofmann. In 1957, after several years of painting under the influence of Goethe’s theory of color, Jensen developed his characteristic checkerboard patterning and began adding handwritten notes.

Over the years, the works became larger, more complex and less rough-and-ready. But the uneven, “handmade” quality persisted, giving the dense and dazzling paintings a jazzy life force that is as hard to resist as the underlying structure of rarefied ideas is to puzzle out.

Linda Cathcart Gallery, 924 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, through Saturday. Space Oddities: Tim Hawkinson’s peculiar little objects are bursting with high-concept ideas that sometimes seem too glib for their own good. But among the 18 pieces at Ace Gallery are a few that retain an ineffable oddity, a cockeyed viewpoint about the imperfections and pitfalls of perception.

“Untitled (White Flexing Painting)” is one of these. It’s a Lycra-covered square with an unseen electric motor that enables it to keep making tiny “stretching” movements, as if it felt too uncomfortable to hang on the wall under the scrutiny of viewers. The image amusingly suggests the unfixed, shifting array of meanings an art object possesses in an era of cultural relativism.

The gallery also is showing a vast array of recent work by Dennis Oppenheim and large-scale paintings by David Amico--food for another column.

Ace Gallery, 5514 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, to June 30.