ART REVIEW

Cooling ‘Water’: In the dry month of August, “Water” gets off on the right foot by presenting 20 images of what is otherwise scarce in Southern California. This loose, 13-artist show, organized for Cirrus Gallery by photographer Madoka Takagi, offers a bit of cool blue respite from the brightness and heat of summer.

In the main gallery, Gillian Theobald’s large painting is a soothing pool of blues, ranging from dense cobalts through liquid grays to translucent aquamarines. You can almost hear the frothing surf in Robert Adams’ six black-and-white photographs of the seashore. And Edward Ruscha’s pair of lithographs puts a spin on such straightforward Romanticism finding, in soap suds or tiny puddles, a world both sensuous and funny.

The rest of the exhibition is made up of various types of photographic prints and lithographs or monoprints (often printed by Cirrus Editions). With remarkable consistency, the photos are as physically engaging as the works in the main gallery, while the prints are less successful.

Fine platinum, albumen and silver prints from the early part of the century by Doris Ulmann, Eugene Atget and Imre Kinszki provide a watery backdrop for Takagi’s own delicate photos of aged waterways. So exquisitely rendered that they resemble drawings, Vija Celmins’ pair of lithographs depicting the ocean or the desert add to the show’s fascination with water and its absence.

For their part, splashy monoprints by Peter Alexander and documentary lithographs by Dennis Oppenheim and Peter Hutchinson fall outside the scope of the show. Rather than meditating on water effects, these works merely include it to get at other issues, whether conceptual or formal. A bit more rigor would shore up this pleasant summer show.

* Cirrus Gallery, 542 S. Alameda St., (213) 680-3473, through Sept. 13. Closed Sunday and Monday.