ART REVIEW : Small, Large Joys at Farber Shows : Painting: Artist’s recent works, at three different locations, are better than ever.

To see all three current shows of Manny Farber’s recent paintings takes some effort. Not just a casual walk through a single gallery, the undertaking requires two stops in La Jolla and out to a small mall off Miramar Road.

The trek is worth every bit of time and trouble it takes. Always a painter whose every brush stroke rewards the viewer’s eye, Farber is now making some of his finest work in recent memory.

The shows are all at venues operated by Quint/Krichman Projects, and the spaces range from a living room (7316 Eads Ave.) filled with small, colorful images, to a small office space in an alley behind Pannikin Coffee & Tea Cafe (7447 Girard Ave.) filled with medium-size and much more ambitious pictures, to a converted storage garage (5270-B Eastgate Mall) with the largest and finest of all the works. Daily, the art can be seen only by appointment (454-3409), but today and next Saturday, all three spaces are open from just 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Go.

Depending on how you structure your visit, the sense of anticipation changes radically. Starting at the Eads address may be the best route because viewing the works in a progression from small to large provides an exhilarating sense of reward at the finish (which is only partly due to the sense of satisfaction you get from just finding the sites).

This way, too, from the first, there is a sense of connection to what came before. For the past few years, Farber has been making studies of scattered subjects, including plants, vegetables, construction materials, seafood and small almost diaristic scribbled notes. In the past, all of these have been painted on brightly hued backgrounds, but now, with most of the new works, Farber has moved to stark fields of black and white. At the Eads Avenue space, however, the color remains. These small works appear transitional.

Small, intense fields of red/orange are the background for an array of life-sized arrangements of carrots and onions, in one case. It is tempting to see the fiery background as carrot-colored. In defiance, the artist has placed his rendering of the real thing right on the color, a jarring juxtaposition of the two hues that mocks the viewer’s perceptions and shows exactly what color the painting isn’t .

As before, Farber’s scribbled notes on his painted surfaces continue to reveal elements of his struggle in making these works--”Patricia,” he scratched into “Double Orange,” addressing his wife, artist Patricia Patterson. “Protect me from my brain. It’s a lethal weapon.”

There are messages to the viewer, too, throughout these works.

“Dig,” a large painting at the Girard Avenue space, warns the viewer “One thing. These are not still-life paintings.”

Through the distance that inevitably separates the painter and his audience, Farber is using all of his facilities to communicate. And his hints help. Indeed, these are not simple still lifes--nor are they echoes of the traditional flower arrangements on a table in a room. Farber’s paintings are structured arrangements of objects that often initially appear arbitrary--they are compositions of individual objects whose order is based on the conceptual formal needs of the painting. In actuality, these objects never were together on the same surface at the same time.

Farber’s tactics have great bearing on the look of his paintings. In the first place, he paints slow enough that the objects would wilt if they were all painted simultaneously. Secondly, he paints on boards, working on a horizontal surface. He places his objects right on the painting’s surface, next to him, then renders them life-sized. When the pictures are raised and hung on a wall, everything looks somewhat distorted, abstract.

The specifics of what Farber depicts are less important than the color, texture and shape of the subjects. More and more often in these new paintings, a bundle of beets, for example, disintegrates into layered hues of brown and red, accented by the adjacent tops, which have been transformed into thick swirling dabs of various shades of green oil paint.

At the Eads Avenue space, the small size of the works necessitates close viewing; at the other two spaces, the intricacies of every inch of painted surface rewards a closer look.

The starkness of the backgrounds of Farber’s newest and largest works are tougher and grittier than his earlier colored ones--though that toughness is deceptive because making colors work together properly is one of any painter’s greatest challenges.

Farber’s black-and-white images display a reluctance to be seduced by any shred of prettiness. There’s a what-you-see-is-what-you-get look to these pieces, a bare-bones starkness. But within, there’s still much finesse and a painterly grace that is reminiscent of the best still lifes (no less) of Edouard Manet.

No matter how plain Farber’s subject matter--bent and rusted metal rods continually show up in these works--no matter how subtle the patterning of the finished compositions, there is always great beauty in these works.

They should not be missed.

Manny Farber’s paintings remain on view through next Saturday at Quint/Krichman Projects (at three locations): 5270-B Eastgate Mall, off Miramar Road; 7447 Girard Ave. and 7316 Eads Ave. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. today and next Saturday, and by appointment (454-3409).