‘Vegas Show’ Holds Mostly High Cards

Almost any night spent gambling is filled with high points and low moments, and the same rule could be applied to “The Vegas Show” at Rosamund Felsen Gallery. Nevertheless, this group exhibition organized by artist Jeffrey Vallance of works by artists who live (or have lived) in Las Vegas comes out a winner because its high points outnumber its lows.

One of the best things about the 10-artist show is that no artist’s work looks like any other’s, yet all the paintings, photographs, sculptures and drawings look good together.

The front gallery could not be more handsomely installed. In each of its four corners, a small painting by Victoria Reynolds punctuates the rhythm set up by the larger works between them. Endowing common cuts of beef, pork and poultry with ethereal splendor, Reynolds’ elaborately framed panels reveal that having one’s feet firmly planted in life’s meaty underbelly whets one’s appetite for beautiful illusions.

This well-rounded vitality is likewise embodied by Mary Warner’s panoramic painting of flowers floating in space, Charles Morgan’s suite of supersaturated C-prints and Jane Callister’s 3-D monochromes populated by cavorting frogs, snakes and alligators. Since no single piece overshadows any other, viewers are presented with numerous points of entry into an enticing sequence of images with no beginning, middle or end.

In the rear gallery, however, this dynamic balance is upset by Vallance’s own “Clowns of Turin” tableau. Measuring more than three times the size of anything else exhibited, and set against the back wall like some kind of hilarious throne, this giddy piece of glitter-covered, balloon-bedecked kitsch is accompanied by an explanatory diagram and text, a souvenir print and a pair of paintings on an adjoining wall. If the seven works by the three other artists in this room weren’t so strong, they would get crowded out by this one-sided arrangement.

Instead, Philip Argent’s figurative paintings combine popular references and ravishing Mannerist colors to open up operatic spaces that are as intoxicating as they are intangible. A lush painting by Mike Westfall, in the manner of folk artist Jack Bilbo, only hints at the inspired weirdness behind Westfall’s fictitious Necrogen Corp., in whose supposed collection the painting belongs. And the Rev. Ethan Acres’ prints and drawings generously extend Christian beneficence to poodles and outer-space aliens, making pointed fun of the art world’s chronic inability to openly deal with any kind of belief.

In the foyer, sculptures by Steven Molasky and Troy Swain echo what takes place in the rear gallery. Paying modest homage to all the artists in the show, Molasky’s wire and wood works give greatest weight to Vallance. In contrast, Swain’s toy-store display of pint-size superheroes--depicting Marx, Freud and Nietzsche, among other philosophical superstars--eschews such in-group maneuvering.

Inviting viewers to play out their fantasies while bringing abstract ideas down to earth, Swain’s rack of packaged figures embodies the engaging user-friendliness that underlies Vallance’s show as a whole. Although there may not be something for everyone here, there is quite a lot for very many. And, as usual, the more open-minded you are, the better your odds of finding something you like.

* Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 828-8488, through March 8. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Stirring the Drink: Tom Friedman’s art doesn’t take up much space, so his exhibition in the small rear room at Christopher Grimes Gallery has the presence of a substantial, often expansive show. Made of three drawings, one photograph and two sculptures, the Massachusetts-based artist’s solo gallery debut in Los Angeles transforms intangible ideas into physical experiences.

In the center of the floor sits a bucket into which Friedman has carefully stuffed thousands of ordinary plastic straws. Stuck together end to end, each perfectly placed string of straws gracefully bends to form an arc that reaches from the bottom of the bucket to the floor. Together, the straws completely hide the pail, forming a circular mound with a diameter of 5 feet and a vortex-like cavity at its center.

This simple sculpture piques the curiosity of inquisitive viewers, causing many to stand on tip-toe to try to see all the way down to the bottom of the bucket, beyond the receding, seemingly inside-out horizon formed by the straws. A shiver of vertigo quickly follows, as if you might get tugged into the funnel-shaped indentation cleverly set up by Friedman.

Moments later, the idea behind the piece hits you: Straws are meant to have drinks sucked through them, not vice versa.

With a delightfully Surrealist twist, Friedman’s piece causes people and inanimate objects to reverse roles. Similar shifts in scale animate his other works, especially his miniature pencil, shrunk down to the size and shape of an ordinary pencil’s tip, and his computer-manipulated snapshot of a canyon that appears to have been formed when a giant man crashed like a meteorite into the Earth’s surface.

Unlike most contemporary works indebted to the mental gymnastics of conventional Conceptual art, Friedman’s objects infuse that style’s guise of scientific rigor with the theatrics of card tricks and the fascination of logical puzzles. Rather than gradually expanding the boundaries of art, his best pieces blow your mind, leaving you free to worry about art’s definition at some other time.

* Christopher Grimes Gallery, 916 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 587-3373, through March 8. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Detailed Drops: Every one of Teo Gonzalez’s 2-, 3-, 4-, 5- and 6-foot-square paintings consists of exactly 10,000 droplets of acrylic paint, arranged in a tidy grid that is orderly but not rigid. Individually dripped from the tip of a small brush, each droplet has dried in the shape of a single cell, with a faint halo of fading color extending outward from a nucleus of dense pigment to a hair-thin line at its circumference.

Although the long hours of highly focused attention that were required to make these paintings are evident the moment you think about them, this is not the first idea that enters your mind when viewing Gonzalez’s 12 canvases at Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art. On the contrary, the young artist’s supple images invite viewers to enter a state of distraction, in which rationality yields to casual yet highly sensitized drifting.

In this mode of attention, you eventually stop scrutinizing the minute details that distinguish the droplets from one another and step back to take in an overall view of the whole. Resembling Ben Day dots in mechanically printed images that have taken on lives of their own, the specific characteristics of each droplet are less interesting than the various ways the dots blend in your eyes to form shimmering fields of color.

With limited means, Gonzalez orchestrates an impressive range of visual effects. Each droplet is not only a tiny record of minuscule shifts in rates of absorption and evaporation, and degrees of viscosity and surface tension, but also a sort of vision test whose only goal is the pleasure of taking it.

* Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 828-1133, through Saturday.

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Present Tense: Two years ago Alan Wayne exhibited a quietly gorgeous series of mostly multi-panel monochromes at Newspace Gallery. In his current show, the L.A.-based painter has restricted his palette to black, limited the number of works to four, emphasized single panel paintings, and dramatically increased the size of his canvases. As a result, his exhibition is so clearly focused that it’s difficult to miss its silent poetry.

Although Wayne’s largest painting is significantly taller than a person, much wider than a door and as dark as the void, it is not remotely ominous. Unlike many monochromes, this untitled work does not generate the illusion of infinite deep space. To look at it is not to be transported to some far-off place, but to be firmly rooted in the present, right where you’re standing.

The absence of visual incidents on all of Wayne’s beautifully painted surfaces creates the impression that time slows down when you look at these serene works, at first imperceptibly but more so the longer you linger. Consequently, even the largest painting has an intimate presence: It is as if you have all the time in the world to savor the fullness of the moment.

* Newspace Gallery, 5241 Melrose Ave., (213) 469-9353, through Saturday.