Perspectives on Painting : ‘Four Generations’ exhibit allows the viewer to compare and contrast eight works by artists born in successive decades.

For some painters, the act of painting is about something more essential than realizing forms. Rather than creating images of objects, they apply paint to a surface to compose non-representational pictures that, void of references to anything outside the work, are whole worlds in and of themselves.

“Painting survives because it enables one to see in terms of surface rather than volume, of movement within and in relation to other movement, of the whole as an event rather than a construction--convergence rather than building . . . in short in terms of bodies rather than things,” writes Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe in the catalogue for the exhibit he also curated, “Four Generations.” The show of eight paintings, two each by four artists, is on view in the Woodbury University Art Gallery.

“Painting can do things other types of art can’t,” Gilbert-Rolfe, a painter and art critic who teaches at Art Center in Pasadena, added during an interview at the gallery. “The problems of painting are problems having to do with the questions of completeness and of manipulating space in a way that doesn’t imply a space filled with things. And painting is the only art that can do that.”

The exhibit’s title refers to the fact that the four artists were born in succeeding decades, starting with Michael Venezia in the ‘30s, Nancy Haynes in the ‘40s, Christian Haub in the ‘50s and Fandra Chang in the ‘60s.

“I’ve chosen four artists born in four different decades so that the show could be made up of different amounts of experience as well as different kinds of perspectives on what painting might be,” Gilbert-Rolfe said. “It’s not simply four generations of the same abstract art, but points of comparison and difference. Chang wouldn’t know Venezia’s work, but she found herself using the same kinds of color.”

Chang, born in Taiwan, is the only artist working in Los Angeles; the three others are based in New York.

“There is a strong tradition of art-making in L.A., but not a strong tradition of painting,” Gilbert-Rolfe said. Describing New York as the mecca for painting, he said other art communities “tend not to compete with New York, but to define themselves in opposition. Other cultural influences play a part in L.A. art.” The most obvious of these, he added, is pop culture.

It is not likely that pop culture is consciously on Chang’s mind when she works. For the two paintings on view, she rolled colorful ink onto screens, photographed them and produced positive and negative images of the screens. By layering those images under screens in varying combinations, she has created several variously hued rectangles and squares within each of the almost 30-inch square paintings.

Ironically, the results of this layering process convey not only energetic movement and a shimmering mystery, but also patterns that call up images of computer circuitry. Chang seems to confirm this notion with the painting titles “Bit 5.1” and “Bit 5.2.”

Venezia’s untitled works are composed of oil paint on cedar wood bars that are assembled together to make one painting. To each piece of wood he applies two sweeps of paint from opposing ends with a spatula, a technique that gives a symmetry to each wood bar and to the work as a whole.

Yet, the relationship of the colors in his paintings is not systematic. In a work of six components, a bar of color somewhere between lavender and purple rests above one painted orange and next to one that is dark blue-green.

Venezia “tries to create a visual experience which is provisional,” Gilbert-Rolfe said. “The whole thing is about relationships which are tenuous.”

*

In contrast to the intense colors of Chang’s and Venezia’s paintings, Nancy Haynes’ multilayered paintings are made of murky tones. She applies only oil paint on wood in “Endgame,” a moody picture that seems to flow like water, and suggests that there can be some light in all the darkness.

A sense of motion is also inherent among the layers of geometric elements in Christian Haub’s work. The acrylic- and vinyl-on-wood painting, “Wood Float,” virtually hovers on the wall.

Haub began painting figures using a model before he turned to non-representational painting. “Painting from a model makes you see what’s there,” he said. “You’re either clear about what you’ve seen or you learn to look real hard at what you’ve got. This led to my non-representational painting. My work is very conscious of a starting point of what’s there.”

Haub feels all of the works on view “open up questions and the possibility for reinvention, change,” he said. “It’s about what you see and the play of what you see. It’s serious play. Try to see it.”

“All four draw one’s attention to how and with what the work is made,” Gilbert-Rolfe said. But viewers will not see it “unless they’re actually going to stand there for awhile. It’s a question of getting people to get out of the quick-read mode.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

WHERE AND WHEN

What: “Four Generations.”

Location: Woodbury University Art Gallery, 7500 Glenoaks Blvd., Burbank.

Hours: Noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday. Ends May 25.

Call: (818) 767-0888, Ext. 337.