Behold the Hard-Boiled Fantasy World of Glenn Barr

Because of its unwavering dedication to artists who are either active in or heavily indebted to the field of comic book illustration, there are few galleries in Los Angeles whose walls are more consistently stocked with depictions of scantily clad women (in various states of aggression and submission) than La Luz de Jesus.

However, there are few galleries where concepts of fantasy are explored more intelligently, where narrative is treated more creatively or where one might glimpse a greater degree of pictorial freedom. Just how necessary the scantily clad women are to the other elements of innovation is subject to debate, but all are present in good measure in the current exhibition of new paintings by Detroit-based artist Glenn Barr.

Barr--whose career floats unapologetically among the often disparate realms of commercial design, illustration and fine art--fuses dozens of pop culture influences into fantastical, post-apocalyptic psychological landscapes. His settings are a cross between “Dune” and “The Jetsons”; his figures combine elements of alternative comics, Japanese animation and those wide-eyed waif paintings from the 1970s. His palette is mellow and generally warm (reds, oranges and yellows, with conscientious touches of blue and purple); his painting style is dream-like, sharp in some places, blurry in others; and, true to his calling as an illustrator, his sense of line is impeccable.

As compelling as Barr’s formal proficiency is the hard-boiled world into which he draws the willing viewer and the cool-blooded characters who live there. In one painting, “Cortex of Desire” (2001), a waif with pre-pubescent breasts and budding devil horns (apparently aligned in parallel stages of development) hovers over a brain-like mass the color of blue cotton candy in a roundish spacecraft that spews a trail of hearts and other decorative insignias.

In another, a slinky woman wearing little more than bicep-length gloves and purple stars on her nipples steers another craft--this one more like a fighter jet--through an electric-orange sky while sipping a martini and smoking from a long, thin cigarette holder.

Not all of the paintings are great--some are a bit too dependent on the dubious charms of adolescent male fantasy--but the best embody both an admirable degree of graphic skill and an entertaining imagination that the viewer would likely be willing to follow into any uncharted territory.

* La Luz de Jesus Gallery, 4633 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 666-7667, through Sunday.

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Pleasant Spontaneity: In light of Ed Moses’ complaint, expressed in an interview in one of L.A. Louver’s catalogs, that contemporary criticism’s attention to “coherence and comprehension” results in the perpetual “demystification” of otherwise enjoyable abstract artwork, it is probably a better idea to describe his and John Chamberlain’s new work, on view at LA Louver, than attempt to explain it.

Moses’ large paintings, all of which were made for this show, employ an eloquently limited and metallic palette of brown, black, silver, maroon and white. Using broad, squeegeed strokes, Moses assembles long blocks of these colors into loose but monumental compositions with a refined, perhaps practiced spontaneity.

Chamberlain’s free-standing sculptures, made from convoluted strips of painted metal, embody a similar sort of spontaneity. Like Moses’ paintings, they are captivating objects: the lighthearted chrome and candy-colored surfaces of the metal, cracked or rusted in places, contrast sharply with its dangerously jagged edges. The fanciful quality of the metal’s swoops and curves belie the tremendous brute force obviously required to shape it into such a tangle.

Moses and Chamberlain are longtime friends who work within similar artistic parameters and whose careers have followed parallel tracks. Thus, although they’ve not shown together before, their work coexists in the gallery almost effortlessly.

Moses’ earth tones contrast nicely with Chamberlain’s more playful colors, and Chamberlain’s ribbons of metal complement Moses’ weighty blocks of paint. Both artists are most poetic at their most spare, when their aggressive force seems to surrender to a mature sense of simplicity.

Reviews throughout the two artists’ careers have consistently characterized them with adventurous adjectives like ‘aggressive,” “trailblazing,” “rebellious,” “restless” and “vigorous.” So it’s strange that their newest work should be perfectly but unexcitingly pleasant--so exclusively suited, it seems, for the walls of rich people’s houses. Indeed, the work seems to be made with little else in mind.

It is certainly appropriate to respect, even enjoy, the virtues of traditional, monumental abstraction as long as it remains lively. Rather it’s the five- and six-digit price tags--and the influence they tend to bear on that liveliness--that could stand to be demystified.

* L.A. Louver, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955, through June 16. Closed Sunday and Monday.

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In the Absence of Noise: There is a deep sense of silence to Jeff Colson’s exhibition of new work at Griffin Contemporary. Beside being a quiet show in the literal sense, made up as it is of drawings and nonmechanical sculptures, it treats silence as the central theme.

This silence is less a form of noiselessness, however, than muteness. It’s like the ominous vacancy that ensues when you answer a telephone call and hear no one at the other end, when you receive a blank fax or find an empty envelope in the mail. It is silence where you expect to find communication.

Each work approximates the shape of some type of announcement, such as a trumpet, a scroll or a posted flier. Colson strips these objects of their traditional communicative function, however, and uses them instead as a meditation on form.

In one sculpture, several black horns stretch urgently but noiselessly out from a wall; two drawings nearby repeat the motif on different toned backgrounds. Another sculpture resembles a postings board papered with curling fliers, but the fliers are stiffened and blank, the total form abstracted. (This motif is also repeated in another two drawings and a smaller sculpture.) The sculptures are precise and carefully crafted objects with a refined sense of shape and texture. The drawings, made on rich cream-colored paper, are smooth, confidently simple, and similarly refined.

In its silence and conceptual clarity, the work exudes a patient sense of concentration, but also betrays a subtle degree of humor. The only fragment of language to emerge in the work is the word “edit,” printed in shaky letters at the bottom of one sculptural wall piece and nearly obscured by successive layers of cream paint. As if to confound the humble but rational suggestion it offers--whether it emerges from the frustrations of the artist during the construction of the piece or reflects the viewer’s anticipated confusion in attempting to comprehend it--the top half of the piece is covered with nonsensical orange spirals. The spirals are emblematic of the broader intentions of the work: the insistent, even playful, evasion of communicative content in favor of its alluring forms.

* Griffin Contemporary, 55 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 578-2280, through June 2. Closed Sunday and Monday.

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Dream Messengers: John Nelson Howard’s paintings lead double lives. In the daylight, they are expressionistic portraits of women rendered in fluorescent shades of color. At night, however, under the dreamlike influence of ultraviolet lights, they are designed to resemble messengers from the dream world, “magical windows” into an alternate reality.

Howard creates the paintings under ultraviolet lights in an attempt to more closely align his artistic process with “the inner workings of dream life.” He intends for the paintings to remind viewers of their deep connection to this life and draw them into a closer proximity with it.

The paintings are rendered in thin, rough brush-strokes and crowded with impulsive fragments of color. Some are overlaid with airbrushed stencils, a technique that creates an interesting, veil-like layering in one painting, “Mardi Gras Stripper” (2000), but seems little more than an afterthought in most of the others. The best of the works are the least cluttered, in which a simple composition--usually just the bust of a figure--allows for a singularity of facial and bodily expression.

The degree to which individual viewers relate to Howard’s paintings will likely depend on the degree to which they relate to his rather limited symbology. Few dream worlds are populated solely by waifish and often nude women, after all; why they qualify here as universal bearers of otherworldly mysteries is not entirely clear.

Several of the women do, admittedly, confront the viewer with an intriguing, even gripping gaze. They are certainly compelling portraits. If they do not correspond to a viewer’s own sense of fantasy, however, their powers as dream world ambassadors may be limited, at least under the natural light of day.

* Zeneta Kertisz Art, 1319 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, (310) 399 8188, through June 17. Closed Monday through Wednesday.