Art Review

Natural Manifestations: Joseph Maruska’s abstract paintings at Patricia Correia Gallery are too facile to fascinate for more than a few moments. Although the L.A.-based artist handles paint as well as anyone, his works are so tasteful they prevent him from strutting his best stuff.

Rendered in a handsome palette of rusty reds, deep blues, intense blacks and creamy whites, Maruska’s juicy oils evoke the space of old-fashioned landscapes. Even though half of the talented painter’s 14 pictures are oriented vertically (and more than half of the rest are square), they all have the presence of natural expanses.

Across these teeming fields, earth, water, fire and air undergo slow transformations, both above and below the horizon. Viewers are invited to compare the act of painting with the act of creation.

In contrast to this bombastic ideal, Maruska also lays down paint in ways that take contemporary culture into account. Various types of printmaking, from crude rubbings to sophisticated photographic reproductions, take shape across the surfaces of his panels.

Neither organic nor gestural, Maruska’s best passages are as impersonal as nature, yet as cool as the newest inventions. For the most part, though, the impact of these elements is overwhelmed by the insistent naturalism that dominates these works.

Imagine if Gerhard Richter’s electrifying abstractions, painted in an eye-popping palette of slick, post-industrial color, were filtered through Bill Jensen’s stubbornly organic canvases, and you’ll have a feel for the way wide open potential is here confined to a claustrophobic tradition.

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* Patricia Correia Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, (310) 264-1760, through Jan. 10. Closed Sundays and Mondays.