Restless Creativity

The only figurative works in the otherwise abstract landscape of Tom S. Fricano’s exhibition at the Platt Gallery are a couple of modest self-portraits of the artist as an affably thoughtful, middle-aged man, now a professor emeritus of Cal State Northridge.

Elsewhere in the gallery, we find the fruits of his more abstract inclinations over the last four decades. The sum effect of the retrospective is a ragged string of connected modules. As an artist of restless creative instincts who seeks to work diligently at an idea or medium before moving on, Fricano works up variations on different visual themes.

His “Butterfly” series from the 1960s veers from recognizable imagery to increasingly fragmented permutations, reducing the butterfly image to sets of three soft-edged shapes that seem to glow mystically.

Structurally, some of these pieces look like vertical, cheerier corollaries to Mark Rothko’s brooding paintings. The cheer factor turns surreal in more garish pieces, aflame in fluorescent orange and rippling with tactile ridges. A series of works from the ‘70s waxes meditative in a chic way.

These works, including the meaningfully titled “Center Glow,” have a mandala-like quality in design with symmetrical forms free-floating on square grids.

Things get much rougher and less orderly with the “Western Series,” a set of pieces that draws on organic materials and found objects, such as feathers and dirt and darts and dryer lint.

From this distinct group, “Tranquil Trappings” may have a double meaning, relating to both the pursuit of tranquillity and the tranquil objects appropriated into the artwork.

Yet another series from another of Fricano’s aesthetic corners are fashioned from tiny strands of color in intricately woven, eye-soothing patterns.

The works, including “The Urban Look,” are cozy abstractions with references to urban planning, electronic circuitry and quilt-making designs. Standard collage tactics are deployed with a rare subtlety for “4th of July 1983.” Its milky cutout images of Americans in gleeful fits of leisure suggest an air of Americana once or twice removed, pushed into the realm of a pleasant and elusive dream.

Seen as a whole, Fricano’s exhibition appears like a group show, a scattered series of ideas produced from under one cranium. This isn’t a criticism. He’s from the school of modern artists for which exploratory impulse is its own reward. Process wins over destination.

BE THERE

Tom S. Fricano, “Transformation: The Nature of Abstraction,” through July 9 at Platt Gallery, University of Judaism, 15600 Mulholland Dr., Los Angeles. Gallery hours: Sunday-Thursday 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Friday 10 a.m.-2 p.m. (310) 476-9777 Ext. 203.