Three Female Artists Reach Critical Junctures

As exhibition titles go, “Seduced by the Surface” may be something of a non sequitur; after all, if you’re not, you usually don’t look much further. Still, there’s reason to see this show of new work by Ayenne Applebaum, Joie A. Rosen and Petra Westen at the Patricia Correia Gallery.

That is to say, each of these women is at that treacherous point in her career where ideas have been generated but not yet made crystalline. As a result, the work is spotty--sometimes it over-reaches; sometimes it capitulates to easy strategies; on several occasions, it’s technically impressive.

Applebaum, for example, makes stained paintings resembling curls of smoke, wisps of hair or ancestral memories of undersea haze, if you want to get metaphorical. Applebaum doesn’t, however, instead, she gets rather too mechanical, painting upon domestic items (flowered carpets, patterned linoleum, upholstery fabric) in order to perform a critique of woman as home decorator--a tactic that does more to detract from the beauty and persuasiveness of her forms than to amplify them.

Westen ups the flash ante. Her mixed-media abstractions feature artfully ripped pieces of black pantyhose stretched over canvas and tarted up with lace, splats of resin and elegant little chains of stick-on letters. In terms of its ratty sexiness, the work conjures Bruce Conner’s 1960s assemblages; but unlike Conner, Westen is enamored of discipline--sometimes too much so, sometimes in a way that feels as if she’s channeling Andre Breton.

Rosen makes her paintings in two layers: First, she constructs a shallow box, which is painted with a geometric configuration. Then, she stretches a silk scrim over the piece, and layers it with urethane and pigment, which blurs the image below. If you’re familiar with Fandra Chang’s art, Rosen’s peek-a-boo theatrics won’t seem as original as they might. Still, the way Rosen sports with transparency, implying things only to deny them, is often very sophisticated. In the best of her pieces, the forms are hallucinatory, in an Op-Artish sort of way, pulsating as you pass before them. In the worst, they wear their novelty on their sleeve, which is, unfortunately, the surest way to get old before their time.

BE THERE

Patricia Correia Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., E2, Santa Monica, (310) 264-1760, through Saturday.