Spinning Dante in repetitive circles

Contemporary artists are notorious for concocting farfetched schemes that allow them to get lost in their work. Viewers commonly overlook such silly frameworks, as long as the art that results is compelling. When it doesn’t hold up, we’re not so forgiving.

That’s what happens in “Sandow Birk: Dante’s Inferno,” a sprawling, repetitive and ultimately unsatisfying exhibition that accompanies the publication of an extremely limited edition (100 copies) of the 14th century literary masterpiece. The problem with the 70-odd drawings and paintings in the exhibition at Koplin Del Rio Gallery is that they’re not much to look at.

As a draftsman, Birk lacks the capacity to make a picture come alive. His figures are stiff as mannequins, frozen in static poses with wooden expressions and gestures.

In image after image, Dante and Virgil -- here recast as Birk and a sidekick -- traverse an apocalyptic landscape drawn as if it were the deluxe version of a storyboard for “Escape From New York II.” Surveying the nightmarish world of freeway ruins, fire-choked skies and the bat-winged, spear-clutching homeless (who are called on to represent everything from gluttony to sloth and avarice), the duo’s unchanging expressions of horror and stoicism go stale long before they reach the 34th canto.

Likewise, the lines in Birk’s ink-on-Mylar drawings are feeble and fussy. Although the artist is no slouch when it comes to putting long hours into his page-size pictures, they do not embody the verve or drama of inspired performances. Instead, the incidental details that pile up across their busily filled-in surfaces recall the tedium of punch-the-clock labor, as if made on autopilot.

Birk’s drawings fall short of the art historical precedents to which they refer, particularly Gustave Dore’s 19th century etchings, which attacked social injustice. Without such purpose, Birk’s works simply sketch superficial similarities between Dante’s times and our own. They never create their own cosmology.

At best, they’re colorful little anecdotes, which, like New Yorker cartoons, are designed to appeal to a small segment of in-the-know readers. In any case, Birk’s series is less captivating than many contemporary graphic novels and comics, which avoid the highbrow pretensions of his watered-down, wannabe academicism, and go a lot further in illustrating an alternative view of the world.

These weaknesses are even more prominent in Birk’s four paintings, one of which measures 5 1/2 by 10 feet. Compositionally they’re clunky, with smoke and darkness used to fudge difficult transitions. Although Birk’s fans often invoke the names of David, Delacroix, Goya and Hogarth, the more appropriate comparison is to Remington and Russell, cowboy illustrators whose works also look better in reproduction than in person.

Birk is an illustrator in the worst sense of the word -- a Conceptual artist whose images entirely rely on the words they cozy up to. His version of Dante’s poem, done in collaboration with Marcus Sanders, has its own problems.

Translating a text from the original is not the same as paraphrasing half a dozen previous translations of it. In Birk’s hands, literature and art are dumbed-down for easy consumption and instant gratification.

Koplin Del Rio Gallery, 464 N. Robertson Blvd., (310) 657-9843, through April 5. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Rugged Chiapas families hailed

In 1993 Maureen Lambray traveled to Chiapas, Mexico, to photograph the Tzotzil, Tzeltal and rain forest Lacandon Indians living in the rugged countryside along the Guatemalan border. Two weeks after she returned to the U.S., all hell broke loose.

A violent uprising by Zapatista guerrillas resulted in the military occupation of the region. The influx of soldiers and government negotiators brought big-city vices to villagers whose customs, dress and livelihood hadn’t changed for hundreds of years.

Over the last decade, Lambray has made 12 trips to Chiapas. At Stephen Cohen Gallery, 32 black-and-white photographs made between 1993 and 2002 depict the men, women and children whose age-old traditions are being squeezed out by modernity.

A handful of Lambray’s handsomely printed images provide fleeting glimpses of lagoons, mountains, dense foliage and hand-farmed fields. Likewise, buildings made of mud, lumber and brick; crops of tobacco and corn; horses and dogs. Community gathering places (a water well, mill and cemetery) function as backdrops for Lambray’s real interest -- the faces of people she meets on journeys far off the beaten track.

At heart, Lambray is a portrait photographer. Her best works are close-ups of individuals. Alone, in pairs and in small and large groups, they stare straight into her lens, or they put some distance between themselves and viewers by looking away.

Lambray mostly focuses on women. The straightforward simplicity of “Muruch” emphasizes the elderly woman’s dignity and wisdom. A pair of identically dressed women, who stand side by side in “The Tobacco Field,” give vivid form to the similarities that link generations and family members.

Lambray has a talent for capturing whatever it is that makes an individual unique. As a photographer, she falters only when she treats individuals as idealized emblems of a romanticized way of life or symbols of larger social groups.

“Sunrise in Zinacantan” is an example of the former. Depicting two women dressed in traditional outfits, it turns their world into a postcard-perfect view. Seven pictures of prostitutes, which show the nude women striking poses popular in early Modernist photography, are an example of the latter. Their stylish compositions diminish the individuality of the sitters and the strength of Lambray’s otherwise potent photographs.

Thirty years ago, series like this regularly appeared in general-interest magazines. Today, such publications have gone the way of vinyl records, swallowed up by an apparently insatiable appetite for fashion spreads and celebrity stories. Although contemporary art galleries are among the few remaining venues for such photographs, Lambray’s documentary works are best when she keeps them simple, less artsy and most direct.

Stephen Cohen Gallery, 7358 Beverly Blvd., (323) 937-5525, through March 29. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

From the micro

to the cosmic

Ever since Monet painted the same haystack over and over, artists have been working in series. Some seem to make the same work repeatedly, as if the creative process were more interesting than its results. Others explore variations on a theme or format, making hair-splitting adjustments as they exhaust the possibilities of a specific setup.

Carlos Estrada-Vega takes the modern impulse to work serially to the next level. At Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art, each of his 13 abstract paintings consists of a series of between 25 and 900 separate oils on canvas, most of which measure less than an inch on a side. Rather than making formally related works that add up to a single series, the L.A. artist makes series that add up to single paintings.

He begins by cutting a wood panel into sections not much bigger than sugar cubes. Wrapping each little chunk of wood in a small swatch of carefully cut canvas, Estrada-Vega then embeds a small magnet in its back.

Next, he uses a mortar and pestle to blend oil, wax and limestone pigments into a thick, pasty mixture. With a palette knife, he applies the bright color to the front and sides of one little canvas.

Before painting the next one, Estrada-Vega adds more pigment to the mix, ever so slightly changing its tint. He repeats this process with assembly-line regularity, never painting two blocks the same color. Each gets its own tone.

In works made up of 25, 49 or even 144 blocks, it’s fairly easy to see the differences between each component, even when there’s a couple of dozen varieties of one color. When a painting consists of 100 shades of lavender-tinted burgundy, 729 varieties of fire-engine red or 900 distinct olive greens, it’s mind-blowing to think about how many more colors there are in the world than we have words for.

The magnets in the backs of Estrada-Vega’s miniature monochrome paintings fasten onto square metal panels that are themselves fastened to larger magnets embedded in the wall. This allows him to rearrange his modular works until he finds an intuitively satisfying composition.

The results of his painstaking yet meditative labors fall into four groups: vertical stripes, eye-popping checkerboards, multi-hued monochromes and paintings made from a narrow slice of the spectrum. All raise fascinating questions about the relationship between individuals and groups. As a whole, they show that small, unglamorous tasks, if done in the right spirit, sometimes add up to impressive accomplishments.

Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 828-1133, through March 29. Closed Sundays and Mondays.