Art Review

Comes the Dawn: Three years ago, Adam Ross surprised viewers by abandoning the multicolored abstractions with which he had made his reputation as a painter, and exhibiting a series of monochrome paintings of Martian landscapes. Through the hazy, chemically choked skies of these strange pictures could be glimpsed distant cities, whose far-out architecture was simply fantastic.

At Shoshana Wayne Gallery, seven new paintings expand the dimensions of Ross’ once modestly scaled panels, and masterfully deploy a dazzling palette of intense azures, creamy lime-greens, smoky pinks, sumptuous tans and icy whites. To see these crystalline images is to feel as if the smog has lifted, and that the galaxy’s true visual splendor lies before you like a giant jewel.

Ross’ exquisite images recall Los Angeles mornings after nightlong downpours, when everything around you looks too good to be true. And like those moments, when the world hasn’t changed as much as your perception of it has kicked into overdrive, the artist’s thought-provoking panels meditate on the ways our eyes and minds collaborate to make up pictures of the world we commonly assume is just out there.

From across the gallery, his vivid paintings appear to be rendered with a miniaturist’s precision. Neatly gridded streets radiate from city centers filled with buildings that could be the futuristic offspring of Frank Gehry’s best works. Surrounded by vast, glassy plains and crisply silhouetted mountains, these urban outposts shimmer with the energy of desert mirages.

Up close, however, Ross’ elaborate cities disperse into incoherent arrangements of odd geometric shapes. Forms flatten, shatter and fragment. What appeared to be three-dimensional neighborhoods become messy constellations of circles, rectangles and a variety of indescribable shapes.

To step back from these paintings is to be amazed by how swiftly our minds organize chaos into familiar patterns, simultaneously tricking our eyes into believing that they’re just observing what’s out there. Relishing this fact, Ross’ impossible pictures stand as apt metaphors for how modern life can be both alien and familiar, without being contradictory.

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* Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 453-7535, through Aug. 15. Closed Sundays and Mondays.