Carpet’s magic pulls at emotions

Hollywood blockbusters as we now know them were born in the 1970s, which also was the heyday of structuralist filmmaking. Back then, formalist art films and commercial movies had so little in common that aficionados of the former spoke snobbishly of “the cinema” and scoffed at popular movies for being mindless spectacles engineered to make a profit.

Dutch artists Jeroen de Rijke (born in 1970) and Willem de Rooij (born in 1969) were too young to experience these different approaches to filmmaking the first time around. But they are acutely aware of their influence, not to mention the changes that have taken place in art and film since then. At Regen Projects, the duo’s new 26-minute movie and series of shorts could be the offspring of “Star Wars” and Stan Brakhage.

In the darkened main gallery, an old-fashioned projection booth housing a 35-millimeter projector takes viewers back to an era before DVDs and digital technology. On the opposite wall, De Rijke and De Rooij’s film begins abstractly. Color and movement are all you see.

Proceeding slowly and steadily, the camera never rests. Eventually, blurry organic forms congeal. It seems as if the camera is traveling through a tunnel-like enclosure, perhaps a narrow canyon or cave.

After a few minutes, the perspective shifts. Now viewers are given a bird’s-eye view of what appears to be a mature wheat field, over which a tornado seems to have passed, or through which a herd might have stampeded. Stalks are flattened every which way, forming chaotic patterns. Many of the stalks are golden yellow, but others are bright red, deep blue or earthy brown.

This part of the film is sharply focused, emphasizing the sensuous texture and three-dimensionality of every square inch. The camera eventually pulls back for its third and final pass. Now it’s evident that De Rijke and De Rooij have been filming a beautifully woven carpet, first pushing the camera through its nap, then using the lens as if it were a microscope, and finally allowing the frame to be filled with the abstract patterns that have been woven into the rug.

This is the longest section of their movie, whose soundtrack provides just the right mix of trippy intrigue and meditative calm. Passing over the carpet, the camera follows rows and columns of stylized designs and geometric forms. The woven patterns lack the exactitude of mirror images; each was formed by the idiosyncratic twists and turns of its makers’ hands. As filmed by De Rijke and De Rooij, the individual components of the carpet’s overall pattern read like a mysterious storyboard.

Their wordless, slow-motion documentary concludes with a bit of digital manipulation. Spinning on one axis and then another, the rug floats off into deep space, like a planet that’s pulled out from under your feet. As it disappears into nothingness, a pang of loss tugs at your heartstrings. The real magic of their flying carpet takes place not on screen, but in how it weaves its way into your emotions.

Regen Projects, 633 N. Almont Drive, West Hollywood, (310) 276-5424, through July 26. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Playfully smudging the Pop lines

Snappy graphics and a shot of grunge come together in Nick Ackerman’s new paintings on canvas and panels. At Richard Heller Gallery, the San Francisco-based artist pays homage to Pop Art’s long-lasting impact with accessible, easy-to-read images that look as if they’ve been around for a while.

Ackerman’s L.A. debut features four big, unstretched canvases with edges he hemmed and then ringed with grommets. Like banners, they hang from nails. Painted with pliable acrylics, they also can roll up for easy transport and space-saving storage.

Cartoon explosions, glistening soap bubbles, lumpy foliage and puffy clouds appear on all four. Plump hillsides traversed by a paved road and a row of telephone poles show up on one. Two include clusters of empty picture frames that appear to be flying through the sky, like squadrons of abstract spaceships, or sticking out from the ground like artillery embankments of guns with square barrels.

Seven medium-size panels and 26 small ones are jampacked with similar images -- as well as loopy waves, distant cities, open plains, underground tunnels, lightning bolts and giant tongues that recall the Rolling Stones’ emblem. An even wider variety of bright colors links these works to 1970s super-graphics, an industrial-strength style of two-dimensional decoration. All are framed. Many of their surfaces include notes scrawled by Ackerman.

Sometimes these handwritten messages flesh out the narratives implied by the pictures. But more often they are notes the artist wrote to himself, reminding him of plans for future adaptations. In Ackerman’s casually offhand works, no lines are drawn between preparatory studies and finished products.

This distinguishes his images from a lot of Pop Art, which often puts a high priority on slick finishes, pristine colors and clean edges. In contrast, Ackerman’s cartoon-inspired paintings favor the improvised adjustments of handmade drawings. Never hiding mistakes, they include drips, smudges and other imperfections. Rough around the edges, they look as if they’ve been used -- perhaps as backdrops for parties or for festival decorations.

To dress them up for the present, Ackerman has installed them in three perfectly symmetrical clusters. He also has painted crisp black lines on the gallery walls. Angling out from the frames of his dynamic images, these graphic embellishments accentuate their zip.

Richard Heller Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 453-9191, through July 19. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Hybrids bridge fantasy and reality

Bill Kleiman combines a little of this and little of that to make modestly scaled works that add up to a lot more than the sum of their parts. At Acuna-Hansen Gallery, his first solo show since the 1987 Fringe Festival consists of six delightful pieces that resemble the mongrel offspring of painting, sculpture, landscape design and furniture.

Like mutts, Kleiman’s wall sculptures compensate for their lack of pedigree with down-to-earth adorability and irrepressible playfulness. Their imperfections, which highlight their homemade quality, make them even more lovable.

The three smallest, each of which is about the size of an open book, are fantasy landscapes constructed from such household odds and ends as pencil erasers, bits of washcloth and synthetic bristles. Kleiman plucks the latter from brushes and glues them into position with the attentiveness of a model railroader.

Strips of shag carpeting, swatches of striped fabric and sprinkles of golf-course-green flocking recall summer camp crafts. Glistening dollops of resin, cast in the shape of peppermint candies and butterscotch drops, explicitly link these pieces to sweet treats.

The three larger works spread out on the wall, spill onto the floor and even creep onto the ceiling (with gravity-defying glee). To Kleiman’s whimsical inventory of materials, they add a mirrored shelf, an upholstered seat cushion, a functioning lamp and a fountain that spurts streams of water from the tips of plastic lemons.

Like tabletop dioramas that suddenly have become life-size, Kleiman’s un-categorizable hybrids insist that the border between fantasy and reality is permeable. His deliciously artificial works demonstrate that it’s less interesting to know where one genre ends and another begins than to lose yourself in the lighthearted mix.

Acuna-Hansen Gallery, 427 Bernard St., Chinatown, L.A., (323) 441-1624, through July 26. Closed Sundays-Tuesdays.

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From perky to unsettling

Art often makes odd bedfellows of silliness and seriousness. These emotionally charged attitudes intermingle promiscuously in “Summer Romance,” a five-artist exhibition at Sandroni Rey Gallery that begins as a lark but quickly gives way to dark undercurrents and troubling repercussions -- just like the real thing.

James Gobel’s two pictures of men dolled up like Chinese emperors are among the most appealing works in this perky selection of figurative paintings on canvas and paper.

Their subjects match his earlier images made of carefully cut felt. But paint allows Gobel to really strut his stuff, flaunting an impressive repertoire of casually elegant brushwork, translucent layers and subtle tonal variations.

Rob Thom’s pair of paintings based on photographs of astronauts testing new equipment and women boxing are tighter and more refined than anything he previously has exhibited.

But they’re still raw. As unsettling as the nightly news, yet far less forgettable, they stick in the mind like scenes from a nightmare.

A single large canvas by Holly Coulis depicts a fairy princess standing in a forest before a mirage of a waterfall. The ghostly painting embraces Goth drama with the fervor of a true believer in the power of dreams.

In contrast, Hernan Bas’ loosely sketched images of guys on the beach bring fantasy down to earth. The adage “There’s more fish in the sea” takes comic form in his picture of a young man caught in a trawler’s net. Bas’ measured blend of sarcasm and self-pity is refreshing.

Mari Eastman’s three works round out the show. One zeroes in on a Chinese vase, transforming its cool porcelain surface into a shallow pool of warm light. Another brings the bronze mermaid in Copenhagen’s harbor to life, turning her into a swimmer warming her bare shoulders in the summer sunshine.

The third appears to be out of place. Depicting American soldiers on patrol, it’s an all too familiar scene from cable news television, done up as a fuzzy fantasy in lime green and peach. Its grim realism kicks in when you realize that Eastman’s image romanticizes warfare in the same way that much U.S. coverage does.

Dreams and nightmares go hand in glove in “Summer Romance.”

Filled with ambiguity and pierced with ambivalence, it leaves viewers wanting to see more works by all of its artists.

Sandroni Rey Gallery, 1224 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, (310) 392-3404, through July 26. Closed Sundays-Tuesdays.