Art Review

Absorbing Art: Richard Sedivy’s new work at Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art is slow to seep beneath the skin. The paintings, meticulously rendered, feel fussy at first and overly cerebral, but at heart they’re meditational, personal. They yield a quiet, introspective richness, above and beyond any intellectual arguments they invoke about structure and representation.

In the center of several of the paintings stands the image of a house, a basic, rectangular shelter devoid of ornamentation. In “Cosmos,” Sedivy sets the house on a faint horizon and surrounds it with floating orbs, some faintly identified as the Earth, some unmarked, one frolicked upon by tiny nude figures, another appearing to be pierced by toothpicks.

In “Language,” the house, encrusted and worn as a relic, hovers among the words “Confirmed,” “Word,” “Faith” and numerous free-floating letters. In both paintings, the house suggests a base, an anchor, in a universe without center, where viable options ranging from mythic to game-like present themselves, equally ripe for the picking.

“Presence,” too, suggests the process by which we construct meaning, but with a softness and soulfulness that feel almost confessional.

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* Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art, 2525 Michigan Ave., T-3, Santa Monica, (310) 828-1133, through Feb. 14.