Art Review

Happy Confusion: One would imagine that there are only so many ways to reinvent the monochrome, yet the artists who show at Kiyo Higashi Gallery faithfully offer take after take on this venerated genre.

Up this month is the work of New York-based Ted Kurahara. Evincing little interest in commenting on this tangent of the history of modernism, Kurahara’s elegant paintings seem content to offer merely some breathing room.

Built up of layers and layers of acrylic--cobalt blue over red oxide, or cerulean blue over light orange, the bottom layers coming through merely as shadows--these images are for the most part bifurcated along the vertical axis. What this conjures is nothing so much as a pair of lungs. Adding to the effect are Kurahara’s wildly expressionistic strokes that, though visible only when the light hits the canvas at certain angles, swirl, writhe and roil, as if caught up in a gust of wind.

One of the most interesting things about these images is the sense of depth they achieve, as the topmost layer of paint floats free, like an echo, a shadow or a memory. I doubt Kurahara has anything more in mind here than formalist trickery. Still, such metaphors happily confuse the issue, allowing for the possibility that this work is more than a standard retread job.

* Kiyo Higashi Gallery, 8332 Melrose Ave., (213) 655-2482, through Oct. 25. Closed Sunday and Monday.