‘Barbara’ Still Loves Her T-Birds, Mustangs, Galaxies

Mark Bennett’s hand-colored collages tell a tale in which vigorous American ambitions take the shape of obsessions that may seem silly but are no less gripping. At Mark Moore Gallery, 25 modestly framed pictures from an ongoing suite of 137 works outline the adventures of a woman as she lives out her larger-than-life-size love affair with Ford automobiles.

Begun in 1982 and titled “The Effects of Fords on Barbara,” Bennett’s series depicts the American dream as a constant struggle to get what you want. Set in cities from Las Vegas to El Paso, Tallahassee to Albuquerque and Baton Rouge to San Bernardino, these accessible images have a bittersweet feel that cannot be entirely explained by their charming compositions, stylishly “moderne” palette, or 1960s cars, architecture, fashions and hairstyles.

What gives Bennett’s collages their poignant twang is their strong-willed protagonist’s absolute loyalty to a particular brand, and her complete identification with its products. Fords are not merely Barbara’s favorite cars, they’re her heart and soul, her alpha and omega, her raison d’e^tre and her modus operandi. This sort of passion has vanished from the lives of contemporary consumers, whose attention spans seem too short for brand-fidelity to develop.

In the single-frame narratives set up by Bennett’s pictures, Thunderbirds, Mustangs and Falcons, as well as Continentals, Starliners and Galaxies, provide more than transportation and status. Religious significance, sexual satisfaction, domestic tranquillity and family values are so intimately interwoven with the cars’ sleek contours that it’s impossible to disentangle one from the other.

Outlandish fantasies and good common sense likewise intermingle. Jealousy and rage, along with clear thinking and contentment, play more than supporting roles in Bennett’s witty images.

Pop art’s scrappy, do-it-yourself side, usually associated with its low end, gives these collages their sweet strength. Made at home with nothing more than a pair of scissors, a bottle of glue and a set of coloring pens--after having made a trip or two to a nearby copy store--Bennett’s art embodies a love for objects and products that’s more powerful than the things themselves.

* Mark Moore Gallery, 2032-A Broadway, Santa Monica, (310) 453-3031, through May 10. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Low Relief: It’s unusual to think of cartoons and UFOs when looking at abstract paintings; but then, Pauline Stella Sanchez’s bright yellow abstractions at Angles Gallery are anything but ordinary. Too weird to be run-of-the-mill monochromes, yet too austere to fit into the category of screwball comics without causing some serious kinks, these densely textured paintings flirt with both styles without succumbing to either.

The first thing you notice when entering the small sky-lit gallery is a large, colorful circle of page-size, computer-generated images laid out on the floor like some kind of high-tech mandala. Made of 125 precisely arranged Iris prints, Sanchez’s circle of synthetic color sets up complex designs that repeat several times and then mutate into new patterns.

Atop the predominantly green prints stand a pair of cartoonish figures, who look as if they’ve been cobbled together from such thrift-store finds as an old lamp, a droopy cap, a pile of sugar cubes and other odds and ends. Completely covered with a thick layer of yellow paint that has the tacky texture of flocking, this knee-high dynamic duo combines the haplessness of R2-D2 and C3PO from “Star Wars” with the mischievousness of fairy-tale gnomes.

The amiable pair also stands in as surrogate viewers, mimicking everyone who visits the exhibition. The relationship between Sanchez’s little figures and the map-like prints is duplicated and intensified by the relationship between flesh-and-blood viewers and the three abstract paintings that hang on a pair of adjoining walls.

These supersaturated monochromes steal the show. Painted with the same strange mix of acrylic and animation cel pigment that covers Sanchez’s figures, they radiate visual energy. Setting your eyes abuzz with a dazzling panoply of optical effects, the paintings (and their after-images) stimulate remarkably subtle pleasures.

Resembling the surface of the moon as it is often depicted in cartoons, Sanchez’s abstractions are actually low reliefs. They recall Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe’s canvases of screaming yellows and Chris Wilder’s goofy works that evoke the idea of extraterrestrial life-forms. Mostly, though, Sanchez’s abstractions draw viewers into a game in which the unexpected happens on purpose.

* Angles Gallery, 2222 Main St., Santa Monica, (310) 396-5019, through May 10. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Life’s Dramas: Keith Sklar’s paintings at Rosamund Felsen Gallery look as if they’ve imploded the split-second before you’ve set your eyes on them. Suspended in the moment just after their images have blown to pieces, but before these parts have splattered all over the place, these works convey the sensation of bursting inward under the devastating pressure of an invisible force.

Made of gnarled lumps of paint, fragments of cartoons and shards of other images, the splintered surfaces of Sklar’s compact canvases pack an emotional punch that belies their small size. You feel these loaded works in your solar plexus well before you know what you’re looking at and long before you’re able to identify what’s depicted in any picture.

Furious activity is all that holds Sklar’s nearly abstract compositions together. It is as if he has struggled so hard to cement his gritty, Cubistic picture-planes together that he has pushed each image beyond the canvas’ capacity to contain it. Think of stripping the threads on a screw or a bolt that you’ve turned too forcefully, and you’ll get a sense of how it feels to be in the presence of these intensely wrought paintings.

Such associations and recollections are welcomed by Sklar’s densely textured art. Open-ended and user-friendly, his jam-packed pictures still leave plenty of room for viewers.

Neither self-expressive nor hermetic, these hard-working paintings appear to be animated by their own internal energy. They’re also about such everyday subjects as running an errand, showing off, giving someone a hand and trying to do too much. In Sklar’s art, as in life, ordinary activities become potent dramas as you’re drawn more deeply into them.

* Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 828-8488, through Saturday.

Oversized: At Gail Harvey Gallery, Linda King’s best paintings suggest moments of focused concentration amid an otherwise overwhelmingly chaotic world. Too often, however, the relationships among the elements that make up these images seem arbitrary. As a result, their format looks more like a gimmick than a necessity.

Each of King’s modestly scaled oils on panel is a painting within a painting. Most consist of a postcard-size landscape set within a much larger expanse of fairly generic abstraction.

Painted in a loosely romantic style that suits their solitary, sometimes melancholic mood, King’s compact landscapes usually depict cloudy skies aglow with reflected light from suns that have just set behind tiny, silhouetted trees, or beyond the distant horizons of vast seashores.

Framing most of these wistful little scenes like windowsills are crisp borders formed by four strips of masking tape that have been removed to reveal a clean layer of under-painting. Outside each of these tidy rectangles are cloudy swirls of color, evocative smears of paint and variously textured passages--always rendered in a color scheme that matches or complements that of the landscape.

When King’s paintings succeed, their representational portions create the impression that they have been condensed from their inchoate surroundings. It is as if these small pictures are concentrated versions of their unformed environments.

* Gail Harvey Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 829-9125, through Saturday.