ART REVIEW : Therese Oulton’s Paintings Are Echoes From the Void

Therese Oulton’s paintings are relentlessly physical. Yet, many critics regularly read them through all manner of allegorical, psychological and/or theoretical scrims. Their dense, enfolded surfaces conjure knitting, needlework or pleating; on this is hinged a feminist interpretation, wherein Oulton rescues painting from its long history of masculine domination.

The surfaces also recall biological and crystalline structures of cells dividing and multiplying, or crenelated heaps of phosphorescent minerals. Thus, the paintings are said to style a universe in microcosm, driven by an unknowable, internal logic.

However, succumbing to metaphor’s siren-call, her paintings at L.A. Louver Gallery can also be seen as a well-crafted essay on art as sublimation: a choked thicket of obsessively repetitive marks, deliberately paced to allow for no pause, no air, no room. Massive and beautiful, they are not wild.

They eschew the romantic fantasy of the sublime, with its threat of the unknown, echoes from the void and promise of eternity. Every stroke is a trace of energy, a unit of matter and a moment in time. Every passage trembles, animated by a desperation that is at once alien and uncomfortably familiar.

In another sense, Oulton’s new work feels more familiar than ever. In her efforts to engage with the history of abstraction, she has adopted some of the signature tics of the New York School, such as Jackson Pollock’s all-over composition, Barnett Newman’s vertical “zips” and Clyfford Still’s jagged crevasses of raw color.

Yet these quotations, however mutated, feel mannered and self-consciously aesthetic. They detract from Oulton’s agenda by burdening it with a set of pretensions, which throw off its otherwise minutely calibrated balance. * L.A. Louver, 55 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955, through March 12. Closed Sundays and Mondays.