Tempest in a Teapot

It’s hard to say where Michael Gorman is coming from, and that’s a point in his favor. The artist calls his current exhibition at the SOHO Gallery in Studio City “Introspectives,” and related brands of visual puns, mixed messages and cross-references keep us guessing, but in a good way.

While Gorman’s work touches on familiar art-world touchstones--from Abstract Expressionism to the hip cant of gallery-graffiti--he doesn’t fall easily into any particular school.

There’s a palpable sense of style here, and the contrasts are telling. His paintings tend to be dense and dark, gooped up with tactile heaps of paint, leaning toward blood reds melting into black. The works on paper, on the other hand, tend to be light and airy, though not as light as a cursory glance might suggest.

“Leaving Texas,” a gruff charmer, finds spare bursts of visual activity on a dirty white expanse, from a hunk of wax in the shape of Texas to black splatters. The narrative bent of the title can be read in the margins through subtly placed images of a stick figure with suitcase and a car in transit. Suddenly, the cryptic scene becomes an ironic allegory for an escape route. (We learn that Gorman left Texas and lived elsewhere in middle America before heading to Los Angeles.)

Another work on paper, “Zoom” draws on too-familiar elements such as an American flag (a recurring motif, seen in torn fragments) and a crude image of the “Mona Lisa,” washed over with milky residue. But what might be a tossed salad of pop-culture cliches transcends hokum because of the artist’s intuitive sense of what goes where in a composition.

A large new painting, “Guardian,” almost overwhelms you with its scale and brooding intensity until you scrutinize the blend of elements: The built-up, ridged surfaces of the paint are a backdrop to another layer that seems to hover over the stew. Pictures of a cat, a stick figure and an oblong sun float on the surface like an innocent, country cousin of urban graffiti.

For all the stormy passions and cool strategies of Gorman’s art, one of the best pieces carries itself quietly. A small, murky still-life “portrait” of a teapot swims in swarthy hues and unsure reality, conveying a weirdly introspective view of a household object. In this work, like others in the show, it’s the characters in the cracks of Gorman’s ideas and images that make his art come alive.

BE THERE

“Introspectives” by Michael Gorman, through Wednesday at the SOHO Gallery, 12206 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, noon-5 p.m.; Sunday, noon-4 p.m. (818) 766-5579.