Dominated by Detachment : Paintings: In the works of David Baze, men and women are in physical proximity, but their minds are disconnected.

For all of their lush sensuality and physical passion, David Baze’s paintings reek of emotional estrangement. Men and women rarely commune in these light-infused scenes--their bodies are neighbors, their minds, strangers. Surrounding environments, too, prove alienating.

In “Gringo,” one of more than two dozen works in Baze’s current show, “Moods for Moderns,” at the David Zapf Gallery, a middle-aged man sits alone at a patio bar overlooking a glorious beach, complete with a blazing ember of a sunset and boats flashing like fireflies in the water. Against this romantic setting, the tourist nurses his third cocktail and stares vacantly at the horizon.

“La Palapa,” one of the most poignant images in the show, features a young woman in a scanty red dress, seated on the corner of a bare mattress. She bends forward, her blond tresses veiling her face, her hands poised as if warming themselves on an unidentified source of light and heat just beyond the painting’s edge. Various belongings are stacked behind her--an iron, a bottle, a bicycle and a doll whose expression echoes the woman’s bittersweet solitude.

Though Baze never gets more specific than this in suggesting narratives for his scenes, one can easily imagine the woman in this image having been uprooted from a seemingly secure domicile. Now, having found a new shelter, she huddles for warmth among the remnants of her past.

Baze, a local painter whose work has been shown regularly in San Diego for five years, continues to vary and develop his themes while maintaining a consistently powerful painting style. His sense of color, light and their definition of the human form can be mesmerizing, so fluid is his brush. Though there are a few surprisingly awkward moments in the current show, where paint gets muddled and the gestural spareness bogged down by detail, Baze’s work is as rich as ever.

It comes as no surprise that the artist subtitles “Soir Rouge,” the largest and most involved painting in the show, “Homage a Hopper.” Melancholy permeates Hopper’s paintings much like it does Baze’s, and Baze, too, saturates his scenes with warm light to intensify the mood of alienation that so many of his characters feel, even among crowds. Ten men and women fill the patio bar in “Soir Rouge,” but not one of them meets another’s gaze. They drink, laugh, posture and sigh, without a touch of empathy binding one to another.

As always in Baze’s work, coherence of body and mind seems to belong only to women. In last year’s solo show at the Zapf Gallery, Baze painted numerous images of women in water. While they meshed marvelously with the fluid rhythms of the sea, the men around them stood or floated clumsily, dressed in business suits. Here, Baze continues to glorify women, especially nudes, bestowing upon them leonine grace, intense sexuality as well as a strong sense of integrity.

The artist himself is the only other character in these filmic splices who shows a sense of secure self-possession. So secure is Baze, in fact, that he can laugh about the way his balding head rhymes with the shape and glowing surface of a lemon (“Self-Portrait With Lemon”). And in “Finger Painter,” he plays again with self-reflexive humor, using his fingers to paint an image of himself finger painting. These visual double-entendres help round out a show that abounds with edgy, sexy, mysterious and lonely moments.

* David Zapf Gallery, 2400 Kettner Blvd., through June 20. Gallery hours are noon-5 p.m. Friday-Saturday and by appointment (232-5004).

Ancient drama meets modern dance in the sculptures of Max DeMoss, now showing at the David Lewinson Gallery in Del Mar and the Church of the Nativity in Fairbanks Ranch. The co-presentation, titled “Sacred Bronze/Profane Bronze,” ranges not only from the sacred to the profane, but also from the stunning to the mundane.

DeMoss, who lives in Hemet, shows a decade of works here, many of which are accomplished but unremarkable small studies of human figures and horses in motion. Although DeMoss makes no attempt at seamless illusion--the seams of his works are quite apparent in what he calls his “segmented style”--he captures faithfully the muscular tension and limber dynamism of both dancing women and running horses.

But it is his more complex tableaux, religious, mythical and otherwise, that reveal the depth of DeMoss’ often troubled thoughts. “Same Sun Rising” (at David Lewinson) for instance, pits a mere human between edifices of ancient Greek and Roman culture. On one side of the man, twisted and tossed by waves, stands a Greek temple with caryatids, or figural columns. On the other side stands a monumental Egyptian tomb topped by a sphinx-like creature.

Ancient Greek myth and culture permeate DeMoss’s work, whether he is re-enacting the ancient ritual of unearthing ancestral bones, as in “Pride of the Bone Bearers,” or expressing horror at a modern tragedy, such as the terrorist attack so powerfully recalled in “Demetria, Demetria, But for the Icarus Flight” (both at the gallery).

A nude and furious devil, a dying man’s last sexual fantasy and the contrast between a young woman’s taut skin and an older one’s loosening folds are all the subjects of energetic works at the gallery. At the church, which has a commissioned series of sculptures by DeMoss on permanent display as well as the temporarily exhibited works, the artist sticks primarily to conventional Christian themes, such as the crucifixion and events in the lives of the saints. Though DeMoss models most of his figures as nudes, and renders them with rich, abstract texture, the scenes he depicts are otherwise fairly traditional.

* David Lewinson Gallery at Del Mar Plaza, 1555 Camino Del Mar, and the Church of the Nativity, 6309 El Apajo, Fairbanks Ranch, through June 21. The gallery is open noon-6 p.m. Sunday-Wednesday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. Works at the church can be seen during daylight hours during the week, and on Sundays after 2.

ART NOTES

Artists are being sought by the General Services Administration for commissions for art to be placed at two Federal Border Stations. The commissions are $65,000 for the Otay Mesa site and $165,000 for the Calexico site. The GSA is accepting resumes and slides from artists through June 8. For more information, call Cynthia Gould in Washington at (202) 501-1785, or Elmo Novaresi in San Francisco at (415) 744-5769. . . .

Art consultants Carol and Thomas Hobson have submitted a draft of the San Diego Unified Port District Public Art Master Plan to port commissioners. The commissioners’ Art Ad Hoc Committee is now reviewing public comments in response to the plan, is expected to recommend the plan go to the full board of commissioners soon for action.