Life’s Complex Geometries: Where Order and Chaos Collide

At PaceWildenstein Gallery, a dazzling survey of paintings and works on paper by Alfred Jensen stands out as one of the season’s best shows. Including four multi-panel, mural-scale canvases and 10 smaller works, this knockout display of mind-boggling mathematical diagrams and crazy-quilt patterns adds up to a whole that is not simply greater than the sum of its parts, but exponentially so.

Like John McLaughlin, Jensen (1903-1981) came to painting late, having his first exhibition when he was 49 and developing his mature style five years later. Born in Guatemala to a Danish father and German-Polish mother, his peripatetic life included stints as a sailor, cowboy, chicken farmer, student of Hans Hofmann, consultant and world traveler.

Like Jensen’s life, his art wanders far from the beaten path. The earliest piece (from 1959) is based on the journeys of two explorers, Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama. Consisting of five panels that have been divided into four unequal parts, this heraldic, nearly 20-foot-long abstraction resembles a set of naval flags decorated with checkerboard and pinwheel patterns, as well as diamond- and arrow-shaped flourishes.

Even larger, more thickly built-up and precisely painted images from the following two decades elaborate upon the early work’s asymmetrical harmony. Based on aerial views of Mayan pyramids, “Where the Gods Reside” looks to the past, but its garishly colored concentric checkerboards are undeniably futuristic. Even more cosmic is “A Quadrilateral Oriented Vision,” a 25-foot-long painting that is divided into hundreds of rectangles jampacked with dots and dashes, which recall computer printouts and a slot machine’s spinning symbols.

As a whole, Jensen’s oeuvre reveals that order and chaos are two sides of the same coin, and that the majesty and mystery of life lie in an embrace of both.

* PaceWildenstein Gallery, 9540 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 205-5522, through May 1. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Mushrooming Vision: “Looking for Mushrooms: Bruce Conner Drawings, 1960-1968” presents a one-dimensional view of a major artist who since the late 1950s has made influential assemblages, films, photographs and collages. At Kohn Turner Gallery, a 16-millimeter color film (here transferred to videodisc) steals the 36-work show, making what would otherwise be of interest only to die-hard fans worthy of a wider audience.

The earliest works are wispy, unresolved studies in pencil. Most of the faint marks on these sketchbook-size pages seem to run out of energy before being completed. Loosely related to Conner’s aggressively haunting sculptures from the same time, they don’t hold their own but merely function as footnote-like complements to their three-dimensional counterparts.

Four pen-and-ink drawings from 1963 show Conner in transition from figurative to abstract imagery. These more sharply defined works resemble abstract landscapes that have a lot more substance than the earlier sketches.

In 1964, Conner’s works on paper went into high gear. Using black felt-tip pens, he filled page after page with tiny labyrinthine lines. Only razor-thin sections of the paper’s whiteness show through, making these dense abstractions look like the offspring of a fingerprint and a brain’s wrinkled surface. Their claustrophobic compactness gives way to energized expansiveness.

Even more cosmic is Conner’s 14 1/2-minute film “Looking for Mushrooms,” accompanied by Terry Riley’s hallucinatory soundtrack “Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band.” Filmed and edited from 1959 to 1965 and revised in 1996, this masterpiece of do-it-yourself filmmaking consists of rapid-fire cuts and whiplash shifts among flickering images of fireworks, cityscapes and nudes in the park. Astonishingly fresh, Conner’s film updates an American tradition of down-to-earth Transcendentalism, taking its place alongside works by Emerson, Whitman and Kerouac.

* Kohn Turner Gallery, 454 N. Robertson Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 854-5400, through May 1. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Mirrors of the Self: “Portraits in Life and Death,” a well-chosen selection of black-and-white photographs by Peter Hujar (1935-1987), shows the photographer at his best, transforming cliched subjects into moments of remarkable tenderness and compassion.

At Stephen Cohen Gallery, 37 vintage prints made between 1957 and 1985 fall into four groups: skeletons, animals, friends and institutionalized children. There’s nothing fancy about Hujar’s technique. He approaches his subjects straight on. Most of his photos are close-ups, with the sitter looking right into the camera’s lens. Shadows often fall across their faces, giving the portraits a casual intimacy.

Hujar’s most famous series, shot in the catacombs of Palermo, Italy, in 1963, depicts human skeletons dressed in crumbling garments as they lay in open coffins or stand in small alcoves. Despite the potential to resemble tacky Halloween theater, these images are neither horrifying nor ghoulish but sweet--even sentimental. You almost feel the photographer’s desire to connect with his long-dead subjects, whose open mouths and dark eye sockets make them look like amiable folks with great stories to tell.

Likewise, a strong, nearly palpable bond between Hujar and the dogs, cows, children and friends in his other pictures suggests that all of his images are self-portraits in one sense or another. In a genre filled with often shocking depictions of outsiders and misfits, Hujar’s photographs stand out because the only shock they deliver is the shock of recognition.

* Stephen Cohen Gallery, 7358 Beverly Blvd., (323) 937-5525, through Saturday.

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The Big Squeegee: At L.A. Louver Gallery, a dozen brightly colored new paintings by Ed Moses exude so much spontaneity and ease that it’s difficult not to be drawn to their lighthearted appeal and light-handed lyricism. Unfortunately, their splashy, eye-grabbing theatrics have a very short shelf life. A viewer is left feeling that Moses’ art is motivated by quick solutions and restlessness rather than rigorous thinking and lasting satisfactions.

Drawing equally on tie-dyed T-shirts, Color Field painting, Japanese calligraphy and Vegas-style razzle-dazzle, the painter’s cheery acrylics consist of diaphanous fields of pale color, over which he has used a big squeegee to make simple gestures. These wide, billowing lines sometimes switch directions in mid-stroke, usually end abruptly and occasionally leave congealed puddles of paint on surfaces that otherwise have the substance of a jet’s vapor trail.

Moses begins each painting by thoroughly soaking an unprimed canvas with water. He then applies wet-on-wet washes, splashes and splotches of color, which form stains that are absorbed into the weave of the canvas. The grounds of his abstractions often recall ghostly, out-of-focus photographs.

Most have the presence of happy accidents, shoot-from-the-hip improvisations that follow no specific goal other than getting lost in the activity of their making. While Moses’ paintings appear to have been very fun to make, they rely too heavily on process and pay too little attention to end product.

* L.A. Louver Gallery, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955, through May 1. Closed Sundays and Mondays.