Art Review

Landscape Diagrams: Like his earlier paintings loosely keyed around notions of vessels and tables, Martin Facey’s “Maps” at Jan Baum Gallery probe, as he puts it, the relationship between order and chaos. Facey, who moved from L.A. to New Mexico in 1986, infuses these recent paintings with the chromatic splendor of the Southwestern landscape but also, unfortunately, with the attractive, formulaic blandness associated with art of the region.

All 27 paintings in the show adopt a similar format of broad, variegated striations overlaid with loops, rings and other mostly linear notations. The stripes suggest multiple horizons and geologic strata, and titles refer to fossils, stones, plants and boats. Many of the paintings have no overt links to the recognizable landscape but are structural diagrams of a more abstract sort, maps of certain internal conditions of being. Richard Diebenkorn’s precedent weighs heavily.

Striations within the paintings’ broader stripes abound with texture, and Facey’s scraping and layering create a terrific amount of motion on the surface, further enhanced by the looping rhythms of the overlying linear circuitry. His palette, too, has extensive breadth--aqua, burnt red, eggshell, teal, pumpkin, sapphire and fuchsia consort intimately on and beneath the heavily worked surfaces.

Despite their abundance of texture and color, what Facey’s paintings lack is passion and vitality. In his exploration of the relationship between predictability and chance, it’s all too evident where Facey’s own predilections lie.

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* Jan Baum Gallery, 170 S. La Brea Ave., (213) 932-0170. Through Feb. 28.