Oliver Jackson’s Fluid Realm : Art: A sense of unity permeates the painter’s works, affirming a spirit of communion between humans and the earth.

One of the things that dawns gradually upon the viewer of Oliver Jackson’s entrancing paintings is their depiction of a space radically different--and missing--from our everyday, contemporary urban experience. The horizontals and verticals of city streets, the architecture of furniture and buildings, clothes and other conveniences are nowhere to be seen.

Instead, Jackson’s figures gather, gesture and cocoon themselves in a pure, natural space, a fluid realm defined by their own bodies and the basics of earth and fire. Cave-like arches of color provide shelter; wide washes of red offer warmth. Continuity between the space of human gatherings and that of the organic world is unbroken. A sense of unity results, an affirming spirit of communion between humans and the earth that permeates Jackson’s work, and makes his show here a vital, deeply moving experience.

Jackson, whose work is on view at the new Porter Randall Gallery, lives in Oakland and has taught art for the past 20 years at California State University, Sacramento. He grew up in St. Louis, where he became involved with the Black Artists Group in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, collaborating with other visual artists, musicians and poets.

“Working with musicians,” he has said, “taught me about the whole matter of time in a painting, the need to eliminate the dead spots, the parts that don’t move.”

Indeed, Jackson’s canvases and large oil pastel drawings on paper are microcosms of the animate world, breathing, dancing, sometimes quivering, sometimes sighing. Like the space they portray, the time they conjure is of an elemental, primal quality, articulated by natural cycles of activity and rest, growth and decline, communion and solitude, rather than seconds, minutes and hours.

Jackson’s “paint people,” as he calls them, are wearing only their own skins of gray, green, red or blue, and often sit in small circles of three. They seem to converse, while they point, huddle and affirm their own shared intimacy. In some works, single figures appear to sleep while among their wakeful companions. This semi-public hibernation brings with it not a trace of vulnerability, however, for Jackson’s spaces are charged with trust and ease, the glue that renders a community out of disparate individuals.

The Porter Randall show includes work from 1981 through 1990, in wood, watercolor and collage as well as paintings and drawings on paper. Only the collages falter a bit in evoking a spiritual world uncluttered by contrivances. The large (some measuring 6 feet on a side) oil pastels on paper bear the richest sweeping strokes of color, with an energy akin to both ancient cave paintings and the physical commitment of Abstract Expressionism. Jackson’s strokes are never gratuitous. They wander through the white space as necessary, in wisps, surges or fingerprinted dabs.

“A great work will always get past the eyes,” Jackson has said. His own work certainly seeps through the skin to reach that inner anchor, that core sense of balance that defines one’s relationship with others and the world. His remarkable paintings act as gentle, inspiring models for the attainment of that harmonious state.

Porter Randall Gallery, 5624 La Jolla Blvd., through Nov. 30. Hours are 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and by appointment. 551-8884.

Uruguayan painter Ignacio Iturria seems to paint with a palette of clay and mud. While his range of browns and grays has a somber, plodding quality to it, his images do not always match that solemn mood. Most, in fact, possess a wry, quiet sense of humor, a childlike delight in manipulating the most ordinary objects into stages for play.

In “Domingo” (Sunday), for instance, Iturria paints a standard white bathroom sink full of water. Here, however, the sink is not a site for a shave but a leisure destination. One small figure wades in the water, another fishes from the porcelain shore. A bicyclist rides laps around the back edge, while two fencers practice on the front. A boat of folded paper floats on the surface.

The banal has been transformed here, but not necessarily made transcendent. Iturria’s miniature world carries no great philosophical weight, but reflects instead a free flight of the imagination. His tiny figures cavorting in a pot of soup and clinging to the neck of a water bottle have the same endearing charm to them. They dangle and wade, occasionally even wave to the viewer, for they exist to entertain and surprise.

In several other paintings, however, Iturria adopts a more melancholy approach that feels far deeper and promising of insights. He punctuates these scenes, too, with miniature human figures, but instead of romping gleefully, they stand stiffly and solemnly. Instead of dancing on tabletops and couches, they stand on broad, plain platforms, docks to the massive ships behind them.

The most extraordinary of these visions is “Retrato” (Portrait), a wide panoramic view of three such ships, a black one jutting in from the right, a white one in the middle ground sending a boatload of people to the shore, and a third, hazy, ghostlike vessel in the distance. All three float on a murky gray ground rather than a fluid blue sea.

Several small figures stand near the largest, black ship in the front, but they seem to fade in and out. Some have only a head and torso, others are veiled by a smudge of gray. A group of seven or so stand together in two rows, as if posing for a photograph. Iturria has inscribed a black rectangle around them, framing their silent, uneasy presence for posterity. The entire scene is one of disjunction--of scale, time and substance. A small, silhouetted bicycle rider temporarily breaks the ice, but his spunky presence only spells further disjunction. In this painting, memory is more tangible than the sea.

Iturria’s world is full of apparitions, both the haunting and the humorous. This fine selection of his recent work is accompanied by a small, well-illustrated catalogue, the gallery’s first.

Linda Moore Gallery, 1611 W. Lewis St., through Nov. 16. Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday and 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday.

CRITIC’S CHOICE: DAVID HAMMONS

The David Hammons show at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art asserts a firm grip on its audience, both through its casual undermining of expectations about art and through its confrontational questions regarding power and race. The New York artist cites Marcel Duchamp as an influence, along with “outsider” artists, those whose art reflects a raw, untutored spirit. Surely the impact of both can be seen in Hammons’ provocative show, which closes Sunday.