Artists on Variation

In the current exhibition at the Century Gallery--which ends Saturday--four artists take on very different, very personal themes in a show titled “Variations on a Theme.”

In Amy Graves’ distinctive series of photographs, the theme is cracks. She takes aim at cracks and fissures in the ground and pavement, isolating and elevating these surface imperfections. Her images are made even more strange by their tight, close-up perspectives and grainy black-and-white film stock, pushing them close to the appearance of abstract Expressionist work.

J. J. L’Heureux shows a different but equally valid link to the real world in her collages, which are based on cheese and fruit labels gathered while in Italy. She succeeds in moving past the familiar pitfall of the collage medium, where cut-and-paste randomness or cuteness often prevails.

With her variations, L’Heureux established a consistent personal style, celebrating the warm color harmonies and loose, echoing imagery. At the same time, she clings to her medium’s light, spontaneous touch in conveying the spirit of idle travel, as if these are scenes from the busman’s holiday of a collagist.

Collage of a darker, different sort comes through in Michael Pauker’s small, weirdly compelling work. Pauker squirms around, expressively, in the cracks between image and indecipherable text, mixing obscure bits of foreign languages and currency, and other artifacts that suggest nostalgia and travel. A pleasant time-space disorientation is the upshot.

Finally, surface becomes substance in the relief works of Barbara Kerwin. Her art, done in encaustic over leach paper on canvas, is self-consciously tactile and inviting to the touch. Her work is both sensuous and ascetic in structure, built up from stacked, textured squares.

The show’s central idea of variation gets a nice run for its money in Kerwin’s “Chartres.” Here, dark chocolate brown squares, which appear puffy to the touch, are collected in a mass of 24 squares. One lone square is separated from the mass like a satellite. In this abstract scheme, which is variation and which is theme? The question is left open.

BE THERE

“Variations on a Theme,” through Saturday at the Century Gallery, 13000 Sayre St., Sylmar. Gallery hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, noon-4 p.m. Saturday. (818) 362-3220.

Moving Up and Over: The SOHO Gallery on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City has been a fine venue for art in an area shy of gallery spaces. Its current holiday show is a rotating mishmash of artworks worth checking on.

It is also a swan song for this space. In January, the gallery will open up down the block, taking over a much larger space formerly home to a stationery store. In addition to a much larger downstairs space, the new location has a second story suitable for exhibits.

For its final show in the current space, the gallery is putting out pieces by several artists it represents.

It is a diverse bunch of work, from Michael Gorman’s dark, brooding abstract concoctions to Hubert White Jr.’s romantic photographic visions of Gotham.

Things get psychologically blurry in a surreal, androgynous boxing vignette by Jay Schutte and a sexually ambiguous scenario in Clea Barach’s charged watercolor.

There are lighter jewels hiding in the back corner in Pascalin Doucin-Dahlke’s charming landscapes, ambiguous little bursts of joie de vivre in time for the holidays.

BE THERE

Holiday show through Dec. 22 at SOHO Gallery, 12206 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. Gallery hours: noon-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, noon-4 p.m. Sunday. (818) 766-5579.