Art Reviews : Amico at Ace: ‘C’-ing Isn’t Everything

David Amico’s abstract paintings at Ace Contemporary Exhibitions read like snappy, graphic designs. Their crisp, simplified images have the impact of smartly laid-out pages in hip magazines.

Although paintings are usually thought of as being composed, it’s more accurate to see Amico’s 12 large works as having been arranged. Each letter, stripe and field seems to have been made elsewhere and then placed on a vertical canvas. It’s not difficult to imagine the artist in his studio, shuffling prototypes until the right look is achieved.

Amico’s use of paint adds to this impression. Palpable sections of bright colors appear to have been applied with a trowel and then smoothed into dense layers that bury whatever was beneath them. The edges of these elements show off the paint’s thickness and make each part of the picture look like a substantial object that has been cemented to the surface.

The letters “C” and “U” frequently recur. Sometimes tipped on their sides, reversed, turned upside-down or cut in half by the paintings’ edges, these two letters, in various typefaces, are also distended or compressed. They function visually and phonetically.

As emblems, they invite comparison with monograms, logos or the copyright symbol. As statements, they demand to be sounded out. With great economy, Amico’s paintings inquire: “You see?” Or exclaim: “See. You see!” Or bid farewell: “See you.”

These clever captions literally describe the conversation-like exchanges that take place whenever viewers look at art. Unfortunately, the paintings in which they appear don’t resonate much longer than it takes to read them. Amico’s witty ideograms lack the inarticulate power and stubborn mystery of his previously speechless works.

* Ace Contemporary Exhibitions, 5514 Wilshire Blvd., (213) 935-4411, through Sept. 17. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Pleasant Glimpse: A modest sampling of collages, drawings and monoprints by Claude Bentley (1915-1990) at Boritzer/Gray/Hamano Gallery presents a pleasant glimpse of this little-known artist’s works on paper.

Spanning the 1980s, these intimately scaled pieces are playful refinements of a formal vocabulary the Chicago-based abstract painter developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, alongside the more famous, New York-based Abstract Expressionists.

Bentley’s collages consist of carefully torn sheets of brightly colored paper, bits of burlap, old envelopes and an occasional wine label. They are light-handed and lyrical and sometimes approach a state of weightlessness.

The most recent ones appear to be drifting apart. The solid, architectural forms that once stood in the center of Bentley’s compositions begin to disperse, as if centrifugal force is scattering them outward.

Bentley’s collages are more delicate, tenuous and fragile than those of Emerson Woelffer, a slightly more well-known abstract painter who also makes collages and was born in Chicago a year before Bentley. In contrast to Woelffer’s bold, simplified and sometimes disruptive compositions, Bentley’s collages look almost mannered.

They willingly accept the conventions of collage and are content to refine its limited set of formal issues. Their slight, visual pleasures are wholly traditional.

* Boritzer/Gray/Hamano Gallery, 1001-B Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 394-6652, through July 23. Closed Sundays and Mondays.