Life pieced together from floating images

SIGMUND FREUD believed that great art awakens oceanic sentiments, making viewers feel connected to things larger than ourselves. Richard Misrach’s most recent photographs take this aspect of Freudian thinking literally. They focus on the ocean to explore the relationship between the individual and infinity.

That sounds spiritual, if not religious, especially for the Berkeley-based photographer known for his unflinching look at chemically contaminated landscapes and nature’s sublime unconcern for shortsighted interlopers. But like Freud, Misrach refuses to let his secular work be bullied into submission by traditionalists. At Marc Selwyn Fine Art, his stunning photographs of anonymous folks floating in sun-dappled seas or whiling away lazy afternoons on sandy beaches evoke the pleasures and terrors of the existential struggle to know one’s place in the cosmos -- and how best to live there.

Misrach shot this series in Hawaii, beginning in 2001. He chose the location for the obvious reasons: The beaches are beautiful, the light is dazzling and there is an endless supply of tourists doing what tourists do best -- next to nothing, for hours on end.

More important, Misrach found a hotel built so close to the shore that the balconies of its upper rooms provided a bird’s-eye view of the ocean below. To see what he saw through the lens of his large-format camera -- now enlarged to 8-, 9- and 10-foot-long prints -- is to feel as if you are floating, just like many of the people in the pictures. They seem to be as weightless as angels, thanks to the saltwater.

Misrach’s point of view is that of the omniscient -- or godlike -- observer. But this perspective also evokes contemporary surveillance technology or the rude intrusions of paparazzi.

Misrach is too much a humanist to exploit anyone’s vulnerability to voyeurism, and his photographs go far beyond such social issues. His unsuspecting (and unself-conscious) subjects are too far away for viewers to discern their expressions.

Signs of economic class are stripped to a minimum; the generic swimsuits and plain towels reveal little of anyone’s position. Sometimes it’s difficult to know if you’re looking at a man or a woman. And age is relatively unimportant, as is race, ethnicity and other hot-button issues.

This allows Misrach to zero in on existential questions that are neither trendy nor possible to answer without going deep inside oneself. The horizon does not appear in any of the images. The contrast between oceanic vastness and human puniness drives one point home: Life is fragile, fleeting and seemingly insignificant. But Misrach’s pictures invite the imagination into action too emphatically for nihilism to win out.

The dramas and comedies that emerge from his works are as diverse and distinct as the viewers who stand before them. Quietly optimistic and stubbornly democratic, Misrach’s gorgeous photographs are profoundly American. They share even more with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman than with Freud.

Marc Selwyn Fine Art, 6222 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 101, L.A., (323) 933-9911, through Jan. 25. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.marcselwynfineart.com

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With Chewbaccas and Neanderthals

Long before computer software made it easy for artists to create fantastic pictures that look realistic, painters took great poetic license to do something similar: compose landscapes, historical narratives and religious scenes that may never have happened but still look convincing in oil on canvas. At Angles Gallery, Holly Topping revives this tradition by giving it a contemporary twist.

Topping’s solo debut features beautifully painted self-portraits that combine just the right mix of photo-realistic detail and Old Master sensuality. Each depicts the young artist as a teenager pretending to be a sexy starlet, posing among naked Neanderthals, extinct mammals and exotic birds.

In one luxuriously brown image, the artist and a saiga antelope stare out at viewers from beneath the branches of a tree where a fat fruit bat hangs. In another life-size picture, Topping wears a black silk pantsuit and plastic heels as she cocks her head, arches her back and sits on the ground, toe to toe with a female Neanderthal who uses her teeth and a sharp rock to scrape the flesh of a beast from its furry hide.

Some of Topping’s oil paintings resemble toned-down -- or “arted”-up -- renditions of standard sci-fi fare. Others appear to be entry-level versions of magazine advertisements, in which leggy babes strut their stuff in uncultivated settings, all the better to emphasize the sophistication of what they are selling.

The watercolors are even sillier. One jokes about prehistoric rat infestations. Another presents a human ancestor as a pint-size and cuddly version of Chewbacca, the furry character from “Star Wars.”

But Topping’s skills with a paintbrush, not to mention her sense of color and judicious use of highlights, keep your eyes glued to her works even when they tell cliched stories. It’s a promising debut, in which an artist worth watching lays out the foundation for more elaborate flights of fancy.

Angles Gallery, 2230 Main St., Santa Monica, (310) 396-5019, through Jan. 7. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Collage practiced on theatrical scale

Tom Wudl’s new works on paper and canvas take collage to extremes, transforming the 100-year-old art form invented by Picasso and Braque into a flexible means for assembling works of great delicacy and poignancy. At L.A. Louver Gallery, the veteran artist’s wide-ranging fusions of abstraction and representation draw viewers into quiet dramas whose mystery never grows old.

A 13-by-20-foot drawing, made of fragile sheets of translucent paper meticulously quilted together, presides over the main gallery. It depicts a classic moment of slapstick, with Laurel making a mistake and viewers having a laugh at Hardy’s expense. Beautifully rendered pink roses and gray eyeballs frame the central scene, across which float silhouetted hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades.

These symbols suggests that Wudl has not only shuffled the proverbial deck, but dissolved its cards into a swirling stew of possibility. Despite the theater-curtain size of his cut-and-paste picture, it comes off as intimate.

The 17 other works are liberally sprinkled with similar shifts in scale, sense and story. This makes for fractured narratives with many points of entry and even more of departure.

Unlike tried-and-true Cubist collage, whose spaces are jarring, disruptive and generally agitated, Wudl’s multilayered pieces create spaces that are gentle, fluid and often filled with graceful movements. Confusion still plays an important role, leading viewers more deeply into enigmas and inviting acrobatic leaps of the imagination.

But loveliness gets the upper hand. Not knowing where a work is going is a large part of its pleasure and essential to the sense of discovery that is Wudl’s forte. His art makes an adventure of introspection.

L.A. Louver Gallery, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955, through Dec. 24. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.lalouver.com

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Liquid light -- chasing rainbows

If rainbows were made of melted butter, they might look like Jimi Gleason’s new paintings at Patricia Faure Gallery. All liquid deliciousness, these six acrylics on canvas are abstract mirages that play such pleasurable tricks on the eye you won’t mind being fooled by their elusiveness.

Each consists of numerous layers of iridescent pigment the artist has suspended in thinned-down washes and applied via squeegees, spatulas, sponges and brushes. Each atmospheric coat appears to have been finely sanded, making it seem vaporous.

Gleason’s palette -- coppery pinks, greenish gold, pale bronzes and rosy aquas -- recalls the complex chemistry (and unbelievable wonder) of early photography. But the supersaturated artificiality of his subtly mixed tints also recalls the souped-up special effects of computer-generated movies. The tug of war between past and present that results is felt in the solar plexus well before it comes clear in the mind.

A hint of melancholy drifts through Gleason’s works -- particularly the four vertical ones, whose blurry centers suggest the erasure of once vivid images. The apparent emptiness is exquisite. There is, after all, no negative space in these paintings. Liquid light fills every nook and cranny.

Patricia Faure Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, (310) 449-1479, through Jan. 14. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.patriciafauregallery.com