ART REVIEWS : F. Scott Hess: Stripping Away Media Hokum

There has always been covert violence in F. Scott Hess’ paintings of Americans at work and play. It simmers below the surface of the turbulent paint, seeping like a fresh bruise into the skin tones of the people in his canvasses. It contorts faces and limbs, making internal distress into a physical reality. This newest batch of paintings is no less loaded with brooding, working-class Angst , but there is a new note of detachment to the artist’s subjects.

His targets in these large canvasses are the masters of media hokum--the shoot-’em-up filmmakers, the “live” mobile film crews and big TV game shows that make up so much of the average viewer’s daily media diet. Hess’ view is a behind-the-scene scenario that strips away the illusion from the image maker’s craft. In doing so, he reveals undercurrents of danger and unreality.

But this “from-the-wings” look at stunts or commercials seems itself artificial. Where the festering disquiet in previous paintings seemed to erupt from the individuals themselves, here there is confusion as to whether it is the situation or the people that’s poisonous. Only in the compressed bodies surrounding an unseen street crime does that ambiguity resolve into a thoughtful encounter. “Yellow Tape” pictures a body all but hidden from onlookers in a black neighborhood by a white sheet wall that is also a reflective backdrop for the white TV crews and politicians on the scene.

While screening the violence from the neighbors could be an act of dignity and privacy, the truth is that the sheet is simply a device to highlight the body for the networks. This is a complex and powerful painting exploring issues of privacy, white control of information and media exploitation. As an area for prolonged contemplation, it offers more than the other painting’s simplistic take on Hollywood hucksterism or violent role models.

Ovsey Gallery, 126 N. La Brea, to Oct. 6.

Poetic Dialogue: Tiffanie Morrow’s dark little abstract paintings are burnished jewels of intuitive action and obsessive process. This is painting that rejoices in the act of making and manages to make that simple message seem satisfying to the viewer as well. It’s because Morrow has such a keen sense of touch to her work. Each rectangular little wooden panel has been repeatedly painted and sanded so that it glows with the deep, resinous gleam of well-worked leather. The artist then cuts, drills, hollows out or refills certain portions of the surface to create sensuous small lines or marks that suggest ancient star charts, architectural plans or strange fragments of lovingly preserved wooden furniture. Occasionally, the surface will bulge out into small organic lumps that seem to hug the surface while lazily exploring it from below.

In her exploration of a painting’s surface, Morrow creates a fascinating sensual but doggedly intellectual dialogue a la Robert Ryman. It will be interesting to see where this kind of poetic formal dialogue leads.

Newspace, 5241 Melrose Ave., to Oct. 13.

Stark Images: Irving Penn is a masterful and prodigious photographer. This survey of some of his famous ‘40s fashion work, silver and platinum portrait photography of famous faces, ethnic portraits and recent dye transfer prints of animal skulls offers a welcome opportunity to see some of the stark, but texturally vivid imagery that marks his oeuvre.

Penn’s black and white photographs are stunning for the depth of their tonality and formal clarity. He gets to the heart of his subjects by isolating them against clear, bright backgrounds where the textures of smooth skin and raw materials come into glorious focus. He uses light to carve out and outline the forms into sculptural potency. Arguably, this gives his pictures of New Guinea tribesmen and Moroccan veiled women an overly slick, fashionably picturesque dignity but it bores in incisively into overexposed personalities like Truman Capote and Picasso.

Fahey/Kline Gallery, 8380 Melrose Ave., to Oct. 13.