Exhibition Places Artist Firmly in the Present

Titled “I’ve Been Here All the While,” Frederick Hammersley’s breathtakingly beautiful exhibition at L.A. Louver Gallery stands out as a highlight of the season. Nothing less than a revelation, the 80-year-old, New Mexico-based painter’s first solo show in Los Angeles in 18 years reintroduces his astonishing paintings in a way that makes you wonder why we haven’t seen more of them in the past.

After all, Hammersley’s place in history is secure--if still underrated. Along with hard-edged paintings by Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson and John McLaughlin, his work made up the landmark 1959 exhibition “Four Abstract Classicists.” No one who is interested in art made in Southern California is unaware of his achievement.

But being a respected part of history is not the same as being a vital part of the present. Although some of Hammersley’s obscurity can be explained by his 1968 move from L.A. to Albuquerque for a teaching job, other artists have maintained their visibility while living elsewhere. Plus, on being offered a full-time position in 1971, he quit teaching in order to dedicate himself to his art.

Hammersley’s career trajectory indicates that a museum-endorsed reputation as a historical figure in no way ensures one’s current relevance. In the fast-paced, ever-changing world of contemporary art, there’s no substitute for regularly scheduled shows in commercial galleries, where interested members of the general public (especially other artists) can keep abreast of ongoing developments, responding to what they see by making it central to the discourse.

Hammersley is the type of artist who makes paintings that look good together even if no two of them seem to belong to the same series. Although it’s clear that all of his deliciously tinted, lovingly constructed and eccentrically framed abstractions come from his hand, they follow no system other than that of his unpredictable intuitions.

Installed so that the straight-edged geometric images (mostly made in the 1970s) alternate with the organic abstractions (from the 1980s and 1990s), the 26 works here emphasize the loose links among Hammersley’s diverse works. With each stunning painting, he doesn’t reinvent the wheel so much as give crisp visual form to otherwise inarticulate experiences.

All of his paintings are made to be lived with. No matter how simple they appear on first glance, you can doubtless look at them for a lifetime and still discover new things about them. With any luck, viewer interest in these idiosyncratic abstractions will ensure that Hammersley will have more influence in the future than he has had in the past.

* L.A. Louver Gallery, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955, through Jan. 8. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Silly . . . Seriously: Michael Reafsnyder’s second solo show in Los Angeles delivers on the considerable promise of his rollicking debut 2 1/2 years ago. Bolder, more decisive and increasingly amplified by an abundant supply of intense visual energy, the young painter’s furiously worked oils on panel at Mark Moore Gallery quickly convince you of their sophistication.

The next moment, however, you catch yourself smirking at the very idea that you have just associated refinement and complexity with these mad, outlandish paintings; they’re jam-packed with whiplash smears of unmixed colors, muddy mixtures of unpalatable tints and long worms of paint squeezed straight from the tube. If a bemused grin begins to turn the corners of your mouth upward, your face will be mirrored by the bright smiley faces that appear in all of Reafsnyder’s fiercely civilized works.

Never forgetting their manners, these raw, rambunctious abstractions always approach viewers with respect and equanimity--despite the out-of-control exuberance that makes them look so disheveled that they seem to be unfit for public presentation. Their stick-figure faces also mock the idea that art from Southern California is sunny and cheerful, like the cliche about its citizens being vacuous and superficial.

One of the best things about these potent paintings is the way they fuse silliness and seriousness. Firmly rooted in a tradition that includes De Kooning and reaches back to Art Brut, Reafsnyder’s crudely jubilant panels fully inhabit the present, insisting that where something comes from is less important than where it takes you. It’s also terrific how his works fly in the face of so much contemporary painting, vigorously demonstrating that messy, densely textured surfaces can have as much crisp, graphic impact as flat, squeaky clean surfaces.

Even though a few pounds of thick, viscous paint have been slathered over each panel, these juicy paintings still embody clarity, precision and distinction. Art, they insist, is not only different things to different people at different times, but different things to individuals all at once. In Reafsnyder’s talented hands, painting serves up the same sort of complexity we expect from intelligent and perceptive people.

* Mark Moore Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 453-3031, through Jan. 22. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Stuffed Birds: At Ruth Bachofner Gallery, Michael Brangoccio’s big paintings of plump birds percolate with narrative potential. Drawing viewers into a variety of landscapes, both interior and exterior, the Colorado-based painter’s unnecessarily tentative pictures leave you hanging.

Eventually, you stop wondering about what’s going in the enigmatic scenes the artist has skillfully rendered and begin to wonder why he didn’t make them more gripping. Lacking sufficient edginess, the ambiguity and mystery Brangoccio attempts to deliver read as unresolved stories and unfinished compositions.

Despite these shortcomings, his paintings contain many elements that work well. Their surfaces have a weathered, rough-and-tumble look that evokes the past without being precious or nostalgic. Brangoccio gets this effect by painting in acrylic on unstretched canvas and, after each coat dries, twisting the fabric as if he were wringing out laundry. This leaves hundreds of cracks and chips he then paints over.

Fusing animated cartoons and naturalistic realism, his birds walk a fine line between fantasy and reality. The ones set outdoors are stranger and more engaging than those forced into domestic settings, where they are surrounded by pillows, vases, decorative screens and other overly theatrical props.

Although none of the fat birds are in flight, the feet of most do not touch the ground. Suspended in midair as if levitating--or as if they’ve already been to the taxidermist--Brangoccio’s birds, like his paintings, need to be grounded in more fully realized situations if they’re to keep viewers from taking flight.

* Ruth Bachofner Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 829-3300, through Dec. 31. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Party Arty: Juxtaposing works on paper with works made out of paper, Pae White makes a virtue of slightness. Her intentionally tenuous sculptures and silk-screens at 1301PE Gallery eschew direct address for oblique engagement. Delightfully lightweight, they dismiss impatient viewers and reward those who are willing to treat art as a party favor.

Rather than occupying space as aggressively as possible (in the manner of old-fashioned sculptures), White’s biggest piece weighs in at a few ounces. Made of hundreds of cut-out paper hexagons and diamonds that have been suspended from the ceiling on nearly invisible threads, “Scissors Club (Neapolitan City)” resembles a 3-D freeze-frame close-up of a confetti shower.

“Paper Clock,” likewise, suspends time without stopping it altogether. Adorned with a cutout pinwheel and a swinging pendulum, this origami timepiece has no minute hand. Contrasting the unit of time it takes to make art with the unit in which it is often viewed, White’s timely piece leaves viewers free to determine if this gross discrepancy is a problem.

Three computer-generated prints do not round out the show so much as present another dimension to its mind-bending tricks. Evoking tacky tourist traps, fish-filled seas and ice cream castles, these virtual landscapes marry Conceptual art to high design with quiet aplomb and effortless efficiency.

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* 1301PE Gallery, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., (323) 938-5822, through Jan. 29. Closed Sundays and Mondays.