Drive of the human spirit

Men decked in elaborate equipment poking around in nature -- much of human history is distilled in this one archetypal image, and it forms the basis for an impressive L.A. debut by Seattle-based artist Ethan Murrow.

The men appear in his drawings in wet suits, hard hats, goggles and headphones; we see them digging, trolling, wading, chasing, listening, watching and waiting in a variety of desolate locales. What they’re looking for is unclear and seems to be largely beside the point, though the title of the exhibition at Obsolete, “Digging a Hole to China,” gives some hint of their projects’ scientific merit.

There is a fine line between the genius and the harebrained, and Murrow makes no attempt to delineate it here. What these characters hope to accomplish is their own affair; what interests Murrow -- and what he captures beautifully -- is the drive.

In a statement for the show, Murrow recounts the experience of building a makeshift vehicle with friends as a child and running it through tests on a dirt road. The vehicle itself “barely moved,” and Murrow, needless to say, went on to study art, not engineering.

But the spirit of the endeavor clearly persists in his art making. It colors nearly every aspect of this exhibition, from the boyish eagerness of his characters’ demeanor to the ragtag quality of their equipment and the naive nature of their exploits. (Of the four series, one involves lava, one catapults, one butterfly nets and one the “Hole to China.”) What he brings to this project that he may have been lacking as a child is the skill to bring his ambition to fruition.

And this is indeed an ambitious body of work. Nearly three dozen graphite drawings range from 11 inches square to 10 feet tall, all lavishly rendered in a style that is sharp and articulate without being finicky or academic.

The drawings are based on stills from videos that Murrow produces in collaboration with Vita Weinstein, in which he dons these costumes and enacts these peculiar experiments himself. One video, portraying Murrow on a beach with a contraption that looks like a megaphone on wheels, appears alongside the drawings as a work in its own right.

The fact that Murrow maintains a connection to these other media -- video and performance in this body of work, sculpture in the past -- makes the scale and the refinement of the drawings all the more remarkable. There is nothing dilettantish about Murrow’s embrace of the medium.

Indeed, he has tackled it with an audacity akin to that of his characters, pushing a typically slight and ephemeral medium toward epic proportions. He doesn’t always get it right; there are several drawings in which he seems to be still finding his footing. In the best works, however, technical precision and compositional intelligence combine with a knack for facial and bodily expressiveness to rousing, often spectacular effect.

Obsolete, 222 Main St., Venice, (310) 399-0024, through Dec. 31. Closed Tuesdays. www.obsoleteinc.com

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Design without much direction

The paintings in Dion Johnson’s exhibition at Carl Berg Gallery are appealing if inconclusive variations on what has become a familiar theme among young artists -- the sleek and vacant Modernist interior, drawn from the pages of vintage home decorating magazines.

In each painting, the image of such a scene -- a crisp, impersonal line drawing -- floats against a field of slender, vertical stripes, nestled among images of birds, fragments of flora, and a variety of abstract gestures and motifs, many of which are cut like stencils from millimeter-thick sheets of acrylic paint and applied over the other layers, producing a lively interplay of shape and texture. The palette is soft and pleasant, alternating between watery shades of blue and green and a warm range of yellow-orange.

The pleasure of the work lies in the cleverness and agility with which Johnson juggles these various elements. If they fail to cohere into anything especially transcendent, it may be because they remain surface elements, floating through the paintings like swatches and paint chips through the mind of an interior designer.

It’s not clear what Johnson means to say about these interiors -- how he feels about them, for instance, what he understands them to represent, or how they play into his world view. But he approaches them with interest and curiosity, and his experiments yield the satisfaction of a well-designed (if not entirely homey) living room.

On view in the back room of the gallery is another very appealing work that falls just short of fully realized. Rebecca Niederlander’s “A Family Tree” is a room-sized mobile made from hundreds of thin, white paper cutouts.

It is Niederlander’s first mobile, and there were still a few kinks when I visited the gallery a week after the opening. The various strands were clumping around the middle rather than fanning out across the room, but it was a lovely sight just the same -- a delicate curtain of glowing white, collecting light from the skylight above and swaying in the breeze of a nearby fan.

Carl Berg Gallery, 6018 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 931-6060, through Dec. 23. Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. www.carlberggallery.com

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Jazzy confections compel viewers

to go forward

The adjectives that spring to mind in the presence of Kimberly Squaglia’s paintings suggest the climate of a successful cocktail party. They’re jazzy, lively, bubbly, blithe, sprightly, spirited, vivacious, frolicsome and elegant, with an intrinsic dynamism that propels the viewer, like an intoxicated guest, from one painting to the next. The effect, like all good party tricks, belies Squaglia’s meticulous and labored technique.

Each painting at Sherry Frumkin Gallery is composed in layers, with various shapes suspended in different coats of resin, creating the impression of cavern-like depth.

In some cases, the resin is clear and glossy, like hard candy. In others, it’s sanded and cloudy, creating a softer, dreamier quality. The palette is a delicious range of sherbet, taffy and bubble gum. The forms have an organic, stringy, often lace-like delicacy.

In “Pander,” one of the largest and most exhilarating works in the show, whirling clusters of frenetic blue lines streak across a field of sea foam green. Columns of pink and rose reach like stalagmites from the top and bottom edge of the panel, while tiny circles and dots float like champagne bubbles through the oceanic space between.

Drifting into this festive enclave of color and form, one is loath to return to the comparatively bland world outside the gallery.

Sherry Frumkin Gallery, 3026 Airport Ave., Studio 21, Santa Monica, through Dec. 24. Closed Sundays through Tuesdays. www.frumkingallery.com

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Enigmatic works go beyond comic book images

There’s a conflict brewing in Edward del Rosario’s enigmatic little paintings at Richard Heller Gallery, but it’s hard to say just what it is. The titles -- “Conquests,” “Inquisitions,” “Reformation, “Counter Reformation” -- suggest a religious war.

The figures resemble characters in a video game, arrayed by costume like members of various teams. They’re stiff and expressionless, like clones, and they float against smooth, rich, monochromatic backgrounds, their shadows distinct but weirdly skewed beneath their feet.

In one, a small gang of hooded boys in short pants and argyle sweaters surround a deathly pale man in white carrying a suitcase and a cricket bat. In another, a naked, blue, eerily smooth-skinned Buddha-like figure with a pacifier in his mouth faces down a cultish go-go church choir clad in flame-tipped cloaks and cowboy boots, while two figures in skeleton suits stand guard.

The work fits comfortably into the vein of comics-inspired figurative fantasy that the gallery has tended to cultivate, with artists such as Marcel Dzama, Neil Farber, Jeff Ladouceur, Jason McLean. It has a painterly polish, however, that sets it apart and gives each work an intriguing, icon-like presence.

Richard Heller Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., B-5A, Santa Monica, (310) 453-9191, through Dec. 17. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.richardhellergallery.com