Heywood’s ‘Off the Edge’ Ascends With Grace, Power

Four major paintings by Scot Heywood at Chac-Mool Gallery rank among the best he has made. Subdued and uplifting, these substantial abstractions are not for everyone. But if you’ve got the patience to watch a painting unfold slowly (over four or five minutes), you’ll doubtlessly find Heywood’s suite of “Ascensions” to be quietly exciting.

Although their title’s religious overtones are unmistakable, these vertically oriented works are entirely secular. The ascensions they refer to belong to individual viewers and take place over and over again, whenever one looks carefully and gets caught up in their gravity-defying pull.

Given the skyward movement his works trigger, Heywood could have called his suite “Lift-Off” or “Levitation,” but these titles suggest motions too dramatic or brutal or infused with spooky magic. “Ascensions” provides just the right emphasis on the graceful effortlessness with which his paintings work, along with their supple power.

As if to signal his own discomfort with such overt spirituality, Heywood has titled his exhibition “Off the Edge.” While this phrase suggests that the artist may have lost his better judgment, it also describes a structural component of his 10- and 11-foot-tall paintings.

Each consists of a pair of large rectangular panels placed atop one another so that their sides do not line up but are an inch or two off kilter. Your eyes are required to jog left and right when following the edges of these works.

This modest adjustment grounds Heywood’s art in the present, giving it a sense of quotidian imperfection. Neither timeless nor static, each upended diptych is contingent and approachable.

Heywood manages to draw an impressive range of effects and emotions from this austere format. While the top sections are all made of tautly stretched canvas, covered with a subtly dappled layer of matte medium that allows the weave of the fabric to show through, the lower sections are wood panels painted in a variety of sensuous colors.

Initially, Heywood’s palette appears to be made up entirely of black, white and gray. After your eyes adjust to the soft light in the gallery, dense forest green, deep midnight blue and regal burgundy drift out of the shadows, joining a group of grays ranging from warm to icy. For their part, Heywood’s whites embody the tactility and tone of oatmeal.

While these paintings require more time than usual to be seen, they handsomely repay the effort. No matter how many times you come back to them, they always hold something new.

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* Chac-Mool Gallery, 8920 Melrose Blvd., (310) 550-6792, through April 20. Closed Sundays and Mondays.