Prieto’s New Works: Colorful and Animated

Adults often dismiss abstract art by saying, “My kid could do that,” but at ACME Gallery, Monique Prieto’s new work turns this standard dismissal inside out. The show suggests that the issue is not whether a kid could make her paintings, but whether a kid likes them.

The difference is significant. To say that a kid could have done it is to assert that what we admire in art is its degree of difficulty--how well an artist has demonstrated his or her mastery of a medium. To ask if a kid likes it is to put a priority on pleasure. Where the former inquires about how something was done (in the past), the latter emphasizes what art does to you (in the present).

Prieto’s snazzy abstractions have an instantaneous appeal that doesn’t wear thin on second, third or fourth viewings. At once joyous and intelligent, her radiant paintings of indescribable shapes squiggling and shimmying across pristine expanses of raw canvas are the adult version of children’s storybooks. In the same way that a child will want to hear a favorite story over and over again, Prieto’s crisp images remain fresh and vivacious no matter how many times you see them.

More narrative than her earlier work, the seven big canvases and four small etchings highlight Prieto’s skills as a colorist, with an impressive array of strange tertiary colors and hot and cold tones setting edgy, off-balanced moods. The razor-sharp contours of the single-color shapes are also more irregular than before, with myriad nooks and crannies meandering every which way.

Although Prieto designs her images on a computer, her jittery, idiosyncratic contours have less to do with pixilated imagery than with the desire to infuse her art with a sense of nervous animation. This quivering visual energy plays off the architectural solidity of her compositions, suggesting that their stacked shapes could topple in an instant.

Plus, these precariously balanced shapes are not plump and bulbous (like inflated balloons), but wrinkled and withered (like ancient stalagmites or weathered mountain ranges). Embodying time’s passage with effortless ease, Prieto’s paintings demonstrate that art does not need to look difficult to be serious.

* ACME Gallery, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., (323) 857-5942, through May 22. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Engaging: So cool they’re hot, Philip Argent’s new paintings at Post Gallery make advanced computer graphics look old-fashioned, outdated and cumbersome. Beyond slick and coated with enough diamond dust to make a jeweler salivate, the five variously sized images in the young artist’s first L.A. solo show sparkle with the hands-off aura of a microchip production facility’s dust-free inner sanctum.

Yet the pristine surfaces, meticulously blended pigments and laser-sharp contours of these acrylics on canvas do not depict a hermetically sealed realm of purity and perfection. On the contrary, they are littered with explicit references to pop culture, art history and contemporary painting.

All of Argent’s abstract pictures consist of paintings within paintings. Across each one’s template-like surface, slim-framed “windows” open otherwise impenetrable grounds onto other grounds. Sometimes these spaces open onto still other spaces, suggesting that behind every image is another image.

Elsewhere, cartoon clouds float in a smoky atmosphere in the background, suggesting that painting is a high-wire act with no safety net.

These illusory openings recall the software that allows you to run many programs at once, as well as the streamlined windows on 1950s passenger trains and the idea, initiated by one-point perspective, that Renaissance paintings were metaphorical windows onto other worlds. Imagine running a half-dozen programs simultaneously on a gigantic monitor, and you’ll have an idea of the spatial complexity of Argent’s paintings.

One of the most curious aspects of his sleekly designed images is that words do not stick to them. Indebted to the poker-faced silence of Edward Ruscha’s enigmatic pictures and the graphic flamboyance of Lari Pittman’s narrative emblems, Argent’s seemingly Teflon-coated paintings do not stun a viewer into speechlessness as much as they leave one tongue-tied--agitated, engaged and anything but numb.

* Post Gallery, 6130 Wilshire Blvd., (323) 932-1822, through May 22. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Flowers on a Fuse: L.C. Armstrong’s dazzling canvases at Angles Gallery marry the quiet beauty of freshly cut flowers to the spectacular drama of eye-popping, ear-splitting fireworks displays. Each of the New York-based artist’s approximately 4-by-3-foot panels has the density and impact of three separate paintings that appear to have been stacked atop one another and mysteriously fused into a single, head-spinning image.

Sealed under a thick layer of translucent resin, the backdrops are dreamy scenes that seem to be the descendants of grand 19th-century landscapes. Often rendered in a subdued palette of moonlight grays, smoky blues, muted pinks and faded yellows, these ethereal vistas at dusk and sunrise include mountain lakes, paired volcanoes and low-lying cloud banks.

The middle grounds consist of twisting lines Armstrong made by igniting thick string fuses that she pressed against the resin. As the fuses burned, they burnished dark, fiery marks into the paintings.

These spidery lines serve as the stems of the brilliantly colored flowers that leap into the foreground. Enormous orchids, resplendent sunflowers, lush lady-slippers and velvety hibiscus--along with an imaginary blossom or two--have been laid out across the picture plane so that not a single petal overlaps with another. So deliberate is their arrangement that the paintings recall formal portraiture.

Like hybrid offspring that are bigger and better than their sources, Armstrong’s exquisite pictures of towering flowers evoke a world gone out of control. But unlike most science-fiction stories about mutation, her works do not tell cautionary tales about the virtues of balance and the benefits of moderation.

Instead, they endorse excess. Sharing less with Alexis Rockman’s mutant morality tales and more with Sharon Ellis’ celebrations of artifice, Armstrong’s giddy images demonstrate that, when it comes to art, there’s no such thing as too much of a good thing.

* Angles Gallery, 2222 and 2230 Main St., Santa Monica, (310) 396-5019, through Saturday.

Small World: Nolina Burge’s tiny landscapes at Dirt Gallery have a lot going for them. Handsomely painted in a naturalistic manner, their saturated palettes include a rich range of blues, greens, grays and smog-tinted yellows. Depicting clear or cloudy skies above clusters of dimly or darkly silhouetted trees, these tasteful paintings represent safe escapes from the mean streets of the urban sprawl just outside their framing edges.

Unfortunately, the young artist’s pleasant pictures lack ambition. Making very few demands on viewers, these square images, which measure only 3, 4 or 5 inches on a side, pale in comparison to the more elaborately crafted miniatures they recall. If Burge’s works were bigger, they wouldn’t be so cute, and their considerable charm might not wear thin so quickly.

* Dirt Gallery, 7906 Santa Monica Blvd., #218, (323) 822-9359, through May 15. Closed Sundays and Mondays.