Bleckner’s Oils of Flora Carry Soft but Powerful Message

More delicate and diaphanous than any of his earlier works, Ross Bleckner’s new paintings at Gagosian Gallery nearly disappear before your eyes. As if made of nothing but thin air, these pretty pictures of powder-puff flowers, stylized cells and exquisitely rendered spores are all the more powerful for being soft-spoken. Like whispers, they don’t rely on high decibels but rather the affect of their messages.

There’s more to Bleckner’s paintings than immediately meets the eye. Large yet intimate, these oils generally consist of two or three distinct images, laid over one another like sandwiched photographic transparencies.

In “Sea and Mirror” and “Dream and Do,” the relationship between these superimposed planes appears to be logical and consistent. A layer of dark, horizontal ellipses precisely aligns with an underlying layer of colorful, ethereal flowers to form their centers. Separate images dovetail into harmonious compositions.

In contrast, the ellipses in “Map by Heart” do not register with the centers of the flowers. As a result, the relationship between the layered images seems disjointed and arbitrary.

Incomplete flowers and free-floating ellipses suggest a world out of sync with its natural rhythms, randomly damaged and profoundly unpredictable. Any number of interpretations regarding modern life’s maladies attach themselves to Bleckner’s art of open-ended metaphors.

Extremely enlarged images of the cellular structure of living tissues lie behind faded flowers in “Woods,” “Hidden Law” and “All the Facts.” These paintings lend themselves to a discussion of health, bodily vulnerability and sickness more explicitly than Bleckner’s other more ambiguous pictures.

Death, loss and mourning are most closely associated with the AIDS virus in “Unannounced.” Indebted to Terry Winters’ juicy paintings of pods and spores, Bleckner’s more fragile and evanescent image includes two pairs of plus and minus signs, hidden among cells and nuclei with glowing halos.

The reference to being HIV-positive or -negative is undeniable. But these simple symbols can also stand for positive and negative ions, or the red crosses on ambulances. Like Bleckner’s works that shift among two or more levels, “Unannounced” does not force viewers to choose a single, inflexible reading. Any sense of loss could be applied to these poignant paintings of intangible sentiments.

* Gagosian Gallery, 456 N. Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 271-9400, through Nov. 2. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Vessels of Meaning: Shamelessly decorative and utterly useful, David Regan’s playfully outrageous vases and tureens put a wicked spin on the age-old debate between “high” art and “lowly” craft. At Frank Lloyd Gallery, several other significant oppositions also get tipped on their ears.

Tastefulness and tastelessness freely intermingle in the young, Montana-based artist’s darkly humorous pieces as they insist that human beings are an integral element in the food chain. The intimate link between life and death (or sustenance and destruction) is most clearly articulated by a tureen in the form of a monstrously engorged snake.

Through the beast’s beautifully cast and meticulously glazed scales can be seen the body of a voluptuous woman--just swallowed for dinner. When you lift the lid of this hefty vessel, you half expect to find something ominous inside.

But all that is there is a clean, ordinarily glazed interior awaiting some soup or stew. The real drama of Regan’s art takes shape in the imagination.

Other tureens depict a towering whirlpool of fish (suitable for bouillabaisse), a young buck whose coat is covered with the eyes of its hunters (best for venison stew), and a deep pile of feathers borne skyward by a flock of little birds (fitting for any dish of fowl). I’m not sure, however, what you’d serve in Regan’s most ambitious piece, a doe giving birth to a fawn that stares, with a terrified expression, right into the eyes of an awaiting snake.

Resting on a plate of three-dimensional leaves, the doe has a coat completely covered with wonderfully detailed images of leaves, beetles, caterpillars, chrysalises, moths, worms and butterflies. Likewise, Regan’s vases forgo strict realism in favor of elaborate patterns and fantastic poses.

All of the artist’s works embrace artifice as an entirely natural phenomenon. Linking the refinement of the fine arts to the usefulness of traditional crafts, his porcelain creatures demonstrate that even our most cultivated activities and formalized rituals are firmly rooted in animal impulses.

* Frank Lloyd Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, (310) 264-3866, through Oct. 31. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Showing the “Way”: At Regen Projects, a single work by Gilbert & George makes for a risky exhibition. If the British duo’s flamboyantly colored photo-based image in 21 parts were not so resonant, the show would fall flat far too quickly. As it is, this pop morality play in one act is loaded with enough narrative potential to captivate viewers for more time than most shows with many more pieces.

In the symmetrical, approximately 7-by-15-foot picture, the rigidly posed and formally attired artists flank an ordinary, tree-lined pathway that recedes into illusionistic deep space. Framing the larger-than-life-size collaborators are a pair of gigantic mouths hovering above dense fields of unidentifiable pulp, which resembles primordial slime in Technicolor or cafeteria leftovers run through a Cuisinart.

Titled “Way,” the artists’ bold image is as frontal and mysterious as any of the stylized figures that guard ancient Egyptian tombs. It is also as iconic and fear-inspiring as the legions of saints lining the walls of European cathedrals.

Most important, it is fresh and contemporary. Rendered in the widely shared language of snappy advertising and eye-grabbing graphic design, it tells a classical tale of passage, of traveling from one world to the next.

Part of “Way’s” power resides in its insistence that everyday life is composed of little dramas no less important than those found in great literature. Profoundly modern, Gilbert & George refuse to play God in their art, instead leaving each viewer to determine where life’s ambiguous path leads--to heaven, hell or somewhere between the two.

* Regen Projects, 629 N. Almont Drive, (310) 276-5424, through Nov. 9. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Modern Salute: Norman Foster’s abstract paintings and representational sculptures at Patricia Correia Gallery pay homage to an impressive inventory of modern artists, including Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Joan Miro, Louise Nevelson, Paul Klee, Franz Kline and Arshile Gorky. The problem with this type of bald referencing is that the awesome mantle of historical authority it invokes almost always overshadows the new works it produces.

In Foster’s case, paintings in the style of Gorky lack the gaseous malignancy of the master. Similarly, knockoff Miros fail to defy gravity, copycat Klines have too little vigor, oversimplified Nevelsons look illustrative, and crude Pollocks lack edginess.

It’s unfortunate that Foster’s lovingly constructed works so eagerly leap into this no-win situation. Without such an overwhelming historical burden, his sometimes lively pieces embody a hip cartoonishness that otherwise might serve his purposes quite effectively.

Foster’s best works possess the jumpy vitality of unpretentious animations. Fewer references to textbook precedents, and more of the interior designer-turned-artist’s own funky vision would strengthen this exhibition.

* Patricia Correia Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, (310) 264-1760, through Oct. 26. Closed Sundays and Mondays.