Scenes far, far out of Tiepolo

Nearly 7 feet tall, fashioned predominantly in a regal palette of blue, red and gold, and bound in heavy gilt frames, the eight portraits that constitute Kehinde Wiley’s L.A. debut are unabashedly heroic in their presentation and fill the voluminous space of Roberts & Tilton Gallery with a commanding presence. That their subjects -- all young black men dressed in contemporary street clothes -- aren’t the sort typically associated with this brand of monumentality is part of their appeal.

Wiley recruited his models in both Harlem, where he was an artist in residence at the Studio Museum last year, and South Los Angeles, where he was born, and he invited each to choose his own pose from a book of Tiepolo frescoes. Each appears in roughly life-sized proportions at the center of a canvas against a flat, decorative pattern of rococo derivation.

The contrast between the realistically modeled figures and the two-dimensional backdrops produces a lively spatial ambiguity that Wiley exaggerates by occasionally pulling fragments of pattern across the body, as though in front of it. Shrewd combinations of deliciously vivid color -- rows of turquoise fleurs-de-lis against a field of fiery red-orange, or a snow white T-shirt against a geometric mesh of sky blue, red, neon green and gold -- also stimulate productive tensions, making the work so vibrant in places that it’s almost difficult to look at.

The figures themselves are beautifully rendered. Despite the formal theatrics that surround them, they emerge as clearly defined individuals. It is to Wiley’s credit, for example, that the traditional poses -- a hand to the chest, a finger pointed heavenward -- aren’t immediately obvious as stock gestures familiar to even the most casual student of art history. Instead, they appear mingled with personality and intention, as they do in much of the best Renaissance painting.

Indeed, only with a glance at the almost comically inapt titles -- “St. John the Baptist Preaching,” “Female Prophet Anne, Who Observes the Presentation of Jesus on the Temple,” “Investiture of Bishop Harold as Duke of Franconia” -- does the premise become clear. The models, for their part, communicate the postures with an unaffected earnestness that neither over- nor understates the validity of the artist’s project.

While it’s obviously impossible to determine the nature of the collaboration independent of Wiley’s portrayal of it, a sense of mutual recognition is consistent throughout. Neither party is winking at viewers behind the other’s back, trying to get in the better impression. Nor is either sentimentalizing the other, manufacturing solemnity or grandiosity for the sake of distinction.

One curious result of this cooperative spirit is an unusually stable sense of masculinity. Despite all the flowers and curlicues, the sensual color and compulsive ornamentation, there is a candid emphasis throughout on the particular presence, both physical and sociological, of the African American man. It’s not an especially erotic appreciation, but it nonetheless encompasses the beauty of skin tone, musculature and posture. It lingers on the sensual qualities of clothing and respects its many layers of signification. And it recognizes the associations -- positive and negative -- that this body inspires.

In some cases, Wiley plays with these associations, as in two works that rather humorously exploit the decorative potential of the sperm cell. In others, he simply lets them simmer, evoking what they will in the minds of viewers.

Carried out with either less skill or less audacity, this work might easily come off as preposterous. In striking a balance between so many unlikely poles -- irony and enthusiasm, intellectualism and sensuality, politics and decoration -- Wiley carves out a precarious position for himself, and he maneuvers within it admirably.

At age 26, the painter is in little danger of losing that skill. One can only hope that the audacity withstands the success it’s already begun to bring him.

Roberts & Tilton Gallery, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 549-0223, through Saturday.

*

An artist hangs at the collector’s pad

Delia Brown has become known over the last few years for snapshot-like genre paintings portraying the poolside lifestyle of a cigarette-smoking, champagne-sipping, breast-baring lot of L.A. hipsters. In her most recent series -- informed, no doubt, by increasing exposure to the tonier regions of the art world -- she continues along these lines but moves the party into the realm of the collector. She petitions sympathetic art lovers (or just those with an interest in seeing their holdings memorialized) for two hours of unsupervised access to their homes, then calls a few girlfriends over and settles in.

The results of this cheeky endeavor, recorded in the 20 small drawings and paintings assembled here, are not especially shocking. The women mostly just talk, drink wine and smoke. What interests Brown, rather, seems to be the way they occupy space -- lounging on couches, sprawling on carpets, lingering in foyers and gathering around dining room tables, all in the midst of ludicrously expensive objets d’art.

On a formal level, Brown has a knack for interiors and clearly enjoys situating her figures in such ornamental environments. On a more conceptual level, the work plays out a fantasy no doubt entertained by many an artist of following his or her objects into the spaces of wealth they typically occupy once sold.

In focusing solely on women -- particularly sexy young women, who array themselves so luxuriantly among the other objects -- Brown raises the issue of commodification, drawing relevant parallels between art and sex. Distracted as she seems to be, however, by all the fun to be had in this decadent milieu, it’s difficult to tell where she really stands on the matter.

Margo Leavin Gallery, 812 N. Robertson Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 273-9131, through Nov. 15. Closed Sunday and Monday.

*

Capturing the wonder of a place

Miranda Lichtenstein photographs spaces with an eye to capturing what cannot be seen -- those shades of impression, like apprehension, delight, awe, comfort and fear, that evade the senses yet color our experience. Her subject in a new body of work at Mary Goldman Gallery -- a shrine garden atop a mountain in northern Thailand -- is more geographically specific than much of her past work. It draws her toward more traditional landscape photography.

By focusing less on the land itself, however, than on the pale green mist that envelopes it, Lichtenstein cultivates a stirring, almost tactile sense of wonder. Of the seven photographs on display, four depict the garden from a distance, presenting the strange intermingling of form and mist with an artistic reverence. Three draw viewers into the embrace of the trees. All are gentle but exquisite images.

Mary Goldman Gallery, 932 Chung King Road, Chinatown, (213) 617-8217, through Nov. 22. Closed Sundays through Tuesdays.

*

Risking a return to the basics

Dutch-born artist Joost van Oss is clearly invested in the generally admirable project of paring art down to its most basic and elegant essentials: clean lines, flat colors, fundamental forms and so on. However, his exhibition at Solway Jones Gallery demonstrates a few of the perpetual dangers in pursuing such an approach -- the possibility of losing touch with a sense of substance, mistaking the empty for the profound and winding up with nothing much at all.

All but one of the 16 paintings are moderately sized square canvases divided by slightly varying diagonal lines into four quadrants, half one color and half another. These combinations -- purple and burgundy, yellow and mahogany, midnight blue and Christmas red -- are perfectly pleasant and reproduce nicely on the invitation, where the shoddy workmanship isn’t visible. But they aren’t enough to save the paintings from feeling like a freshman year exercise in color theory.

At the center of the gallery, the one sculpture in the show is a full-sized plaster replica of an ancient Greek kouros, or standing man, made by Van Oss during a residency at the Getty Research Institute two years ago.

It’s accompanied by a photo, presumably of the original, and an academic passage discussing the figure as “an idealized symbol of masculinity and male virtue.”

Like the paintings, this sculpture suite gestures toward interesting issues. But it also appears to be so fragmented as to have been alienated from its original purpose -- or rather too short on purpose to begin with.

Solway Jones Gallery, 5377 Wilshire Blvd., (323) 937-7354, through Nov. 22. Closed Sundays and Mondays.