ART REVIEW

Exploring Color: Kevin Hanley’s six small photographic images at Acme Gallery are too fussy for their own good. Overly precious, sometimes even cutesy, their formal refinement gets in the way of their otherwise exciting exploration of color.

The young, talented artist’s best prints depict ordinary urban scenes infused with a delicately queasy sense of claustrophobia. Two interiors focus on narrow doors. One is ajar and shows a bedroom bathed in golden light; the other is closed and belongs to a tiny elevator (no wider than a phone booth) that’s painted a strangely unpatriotic palette of red, white and blue.

Hanley’s exterior views are compressed cityscapes that look down at odd angles from what appear to be second- or third-floor windows. Highly artificial compositions recall various art films and stylized Cubist collages, as well as abstract paintings and snappy graphic designs.

High contrasts animate “Double Cross” and “Pedestrian Contours,” whose bright whites and leafy greens pop out from each picture’s muted grays and browns. Treating pedestrians as compositional elements, these images recall black-and-white photographs that flirted with abstraction earlier in the century. Until Hanley sharpens his skills as a colorist, though, the fastidiousness of his compositions will continue to overwhelm their most interesting and original component.

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* Acme Gallery, 1800-B Berkeley St., Santa Monica, (310) 264-5818, through Nov. 15. Closed Sundays and Mondays.