ART REVIEWS : Stark Paints a Sumptuous, Labor-Intensive ‘Rainbow’

Like an alchemist who’s unaware that she’s a living anachronism, Linda Stark takes the ingredients usually used to make paintings and instead crafts ravishing wall-sculptures. Under her spell, oil on canvas and panel is transformed into dancing flames, frozen drips, interwoven strips, cascading waves and spiraling grooves. Each small, 3-D piece embodies exquisite, gem-like perfection.

Titled “Be the Rainbow,” Stark’s gorgeous show at Marc Foxx Gallery includes every color of the spectrum and at least one example of her idiosyncratic, exceptionally painstaking techniques. A hot, Pop palette of eye-grabbing, candy-colored artificiality dovetails with the mind-boggling processes Stark patiently endures as she makes her labor-intensive reliefs.

“Candy Corn Weave” consists of viscous rivulets of pigment poured diagonally across a square canvas, to form a neat grid that mimics the weave of the fabric. Each stripe of paint must dry for days before Stark pours another parallel band that follows an elaborate, pre-conceived pattern, running over and under the bands it intersects.

Other works employ similar, slow accretions of paint, sometimes building up to form a verdant volcano (“Be Mine”), an icicle-like melt-down (“Guardian of the Night Rainbow”) or a pair of protruding nipples (“Rainbow Pierce”). A powerful sense of stoicism is palpable in these pieces, recalling the patience Penelope demonstrated as she kept her suitors at bay, unraveling by night what she had woven by day.

Stark’s two most mysterious works appear to have been carved out of thick slabs of paint. Glistening as if they’re still wet, the dense contours of these reliefs were actually made by teasing the edges of puddles of paint, just before they dried. Tiny ripples, pinnacles and puckers grew, layer after layer, to form wavy ridges and spiraling valleys.

Shamelessly sumptuous, Stark’s art embraces excessiveness. With a piece titled “Purple Love IV (Rotation Diptych),” it’s clear that the artist isn’t afraid to put her obsessive behavior on public display, where the risk of embarrassment is always present. In the end, Stark’s sculpted paintings redeem the labor that goes into their making, resulting in talismans of infectious dedication that’s freely available to every viewer.

* Marc Foxx Gallery, 3026 Nebraska Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 315-2841, through Nov. 18. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Twisted: Frank Stella’s monstrous metal sculptures at the new Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills appear to be the wreckage of an intergalactic traffic accident. Twisted scraps of alloy, solidified splashes of molten lead, jagged slabs of rusted steel and bent sections of burnt metal litter the floor and tower over your head. They provide a weighty counterpoint to the airy gallery designed by architect Richard Meier, whose aerodynamic ceiling lifts off from three walls like the roof of Eero Saarinen’s Dulles International Airport.

One of Stella’s six, unpainted abstractions stands on leg-like supports; two sit on huge, horizontal platforms and three crumple over vertical, fence-like structures. Evidence of vigorous activity is omnipresent. Heavy-duty bolts, shiny scars from welding torches and dozens of spindly protrusions of cast steel (formed when various molds overflowed) constantly remind you of the artistic decisions that went into these works.

Despite the theatrical excessiveness of Stella’s sprawling sculptures, a tough formal logic holds them together. The longer you look, the more they seem to be the work of a connoisseur who fussed over juxtapositions of textures, balances of mass and compositional shifts.

Very little happens by accident in Stella’s self-conscious sculptures. As a result, these elaborate abstractions feel more like props for some sort of Hollywood science-fiction adventure than the real thing. After all, imaginary crashes almost always look better than real ones.

* Gagosian Gallery, 456 N. Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 271-9400, through Nov . 25. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Zippy: To see Linda Burnham’s zippy paintings at Christopher Grimes Gallery, you have to do a double-take. And then do it again. And again.

On first glance, your eyes get stuck on the enlarged dingbats at the centers of Burnham’s seven, body-scaled images. Lifted from graphic design catalogues from the 1950s, these smiling, striving pictograms of businessmen no longer embellish print advertisements nor spruce up company reports. Instead, they’re the main characters in cartoonish dramas you’ve happened to stumble upon.

After your eyes adjust to Burnham’s quirky palette of mustard, avocado, beige, rust, peach and turquoise, the giddy dingbats lose their eye-popping prominence. They almost get lost in the abstract cacophony of stylized designs and disconnected textures that make up the artist’s animated works.

Only then do you notice that Burnham has glued entire tablecloths to two of her canvases, and large swatches of curtain fabric (depicting frolicking ponies and Jetson-esque diagrams) to two others, seamlessly fusing printed and painted patterns. Inexpensive paneling emerges from the background of one work, and a woman’s face peeks through from the underpainting of another.

Amid these disparate images and media, abstraction promiscuously intermingles with figuration, keeping your mind off balance as your eyeballs bounce around overlapping fields. Simultaneously swift and slow to unfold, Burnham’s paintings invite visits of various paces, accommodating all sorts of eyes, from casual glances to intense scrutinies.

* Christopher Grimes Gallery, 916 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 587-3373, through Nov. 11. Closed Sundays and Mondays.