ART REVIEWS : Friedkin Photos Explore the Real and Unreal in Hollywood

As a photographer, Anthony Friedkin is many things: portraitist, street shooter, traveler, party animal, surfer. But, as we see in a 20-year mini-retrospective, it’s probably his insight into the surreal illusions of Hollywood and California’s mystique of dangerous glamour that is most consistent.

“Gable, Lombard & Fields,” a 1978 picture of a movie poster, a silhouette of W. C. Fields and the false front of a building--all leaning against a corrugated metal wall at a film studio--makes a point about the literal shallowness of Hollywood imagery. Two works done this year pick up the same theme. One, “Ed Culver Studio,” presents an intriguing confusion about reality and illusion inside a picture frame. The other, “Lake With Skyline, Universal Studios,” sets a panoramic landscape painting in a similar, natural setting.

Friedkin often sniffs around the edges of obvious subjects and comes up with more revealing ones. A 1988 picture of film extras killing time in Long Beach suggests that the path to stardom is filled with grinding boredom. Beverly Hills High School cheerleaders are not sexy teen-agers but chubby kids who are trying to figure out what to do with themselves. A chauffeur with a toothpaste smile, on the other hand, appears to have no doubts. A consummate actor, he revels in his glistening limo and plays his role to the hilt.

The show includes works from Friedkin’s essays on Beverly Hills, Hollywood, surfing and portraits of photographers. Seen in the context of AIDS, images from his early ‘70s “Gay Essay” seem naively touching, but if he shot the same subject today, the results might not be much different. A sturdy thread of empathy runs throughout, which translates as a nonjudgmental love of people and their foibles.

G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, 7224 Melrose Ave., to Saturday.

Emotional Encounters: In a show called “Vital Signs,” Linda Burnham’s paintings are awash in fluids. Drips, splatters and rivulets of pigment rush over the surfaces of paper and canvas, charging the paintings with the force of rushing water or, to put it metaphorically, the force of life. Playing against this organic flow are crisply painted “&” signs and vestiges of the sort of floral and fruit motifs that might be found on wallpaper.

At first glance, these contrasting components seem to trigger a comparison between emotion and intellect or free thought and codified images. But Burnham is said to use the “&” signs as stand-ins for emotion; they can also be interpreted as conjunctions in unfinished business. In other words, these are open-ended paintings that inspire thought but offer emotional satisfaction. As pure paintings, they are also a pleasure to see.

Phyllis Green’s new sculptures, made of tree branches, concrete and polymer, symbolize encounters between human beings and the environment. Reduced to two pieces--one smoothly finished, the other rough or speckled--they hang from the ceiling or sprout from walls. Their linear forms are entangled in gestures, aptly named “Levitation,” “Revelation,” “Desire” or “Mediate.”

Each sculpture is characterized by a precarious sense of balance that fills the work with energy and tension. As one limb threads through another, the skeletal components seem to send off radar signals that can be interpreted as welcoming or warning.

Jan Baum Gallery, 170 S. La Brea Ave., to June 9.

Failed Science: Photographer Kennneth Shorr has often stretched the boundaries of his medium, but his current show moves boldly into the realm of sculpture. Photographs are “framed” and overwhelmed by furniture, hardware and scientific equipment, and the images are rather like ghosts of some pre-nuclear age when human beings walked the earth in a state of relative purity. The message isn’t so much about the evil of science as the failure of science, however. As Shorr sees it, many scientific discoveries haven’t made the earth more amenable to people; instead, they are controlling forces that may become obsolete as soon as they do their damage.

A picture of Hitler stares out of the globe of a medical operating lamp in one work. “The Golden Age of Silence” is a long, shelf-like piece containing electronic gadgetry, a fuzzy photograph of nude women walking and a picture of a dentist putting an enormous drill in a girl’s mouth. “What Makes You Think This Test Is Biased?” has a photograph of a black maid holding a white baby mounted on a “Spectronic” gauge that sits on a gilded table. It isn’t always clear what the buttons, dials and instruments were meant to do before Shorr rescued these devices from scrap heaps, but they look so ominous that he makes his point while reminding us that we are looking at mechanical dinosaurs.

Concurrently, Margaret Munz shows paintings based on religion and mythology. In all of them, human beings seem to be controlled by superior forces. “Franken Box & the Ten Commandets” features cherubs on puppet strings and a crucifix as a jack-in-the-box. In “Riding the Domino,” nude women fall off a cliff along with a parade of lemmings. Loaded with symbolism and highly detailed, these paintings betray a fascination with the seductions and excesses of organized religion. It’s rich territory, but Munz’s work often seems cramped and burdened by the desire to deal with important subject matter.

Saxon-Lee Gallery, 7525 Beverly Blvd., to June 23.