Strange bedfellows wind up making some strange sense

Judy Garland’s 1948 movie “Easter Parade” would not seem to have much in common with the basic course in aesthetics taught at the Bauhaus circa 1920 by Swiss color theorist Johannes Itten. Nor are Judy and Johannes the first connections one would make with the Epicurean Roman emperor Hadrian (76-138), whose reign Edward Gibbon identified in his massive “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” with the happiest period in human history. Yet, here they all are, together with a few others, in Mark Flores’ oddly compelling exhibition of paintings, drawings and sculpture, his second at David Kordansky Gallery.

They do finally make strange sense together -- especially if narrative logic is suspended as a guide in favor of irrational eccentricity. Perhaps that quotient of human happiness measured by Gibbons is in fact a unifying undercurrent.

“Antinous of Santa Monica Boulevard” is an assemblage centered on a souvenir-shop Greek bust made from cheap plaster that has been painted to imitate bronze. The bust is shrouded in a form-fitting, prophylactic garment sewn from lambskin, and it stands on a similarly covered pedestal upholstered in blue denim. Two drawings on nearby walls reproduce Itten’s lasting artistic invention -- a color chart in the form of a starburst, one dark and the other light.

Antinous was Hadrian’s boyfriend, a comely Greek youth elevated by the emperor to the status of a god after he mysteriously drowned in the Nile. (The cause -- accident, suicide or murder -- is still debated.) However, Flores’ version isn’t much like one of the ubiquitous, exquisitely refined classical sculptures and medallions carved to commemorate Antinous’ beauty and Hadrian’s reverence for Hellenistic ideals. It’s more like the setup for a cover-art shoot for a paperback edition of “City of Night.”

Itten’s color stars celebrate the delightful improbability of it all. The painter’s Bauhaus breakthrough was to study color not just as a scientific phenomenon but as one with emotional, philosophical and psychological resonance. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but sometimes red is hot. Flores pumps up this irrational, unscientific pleasure principle in “Comparative Brilliance/After Itten,” a mural-size color chart painted in oil and resin whose 384 6-inch squares of metal chronicle subtle nuances of tint and tone and -- presumably -- accompanying states of mind.

“Mr. Monotony,” a modest triptych of colored pencil drawings, is the show’s most diverting work. (It’s one of four drawings on view.) The three images reproduce photographic stills from a musical number edited out of “Easter Parade” but now considered classic Garland.

Dressed in her archetypal androgynous attire -- man’s black fedora and tuxedo jacket and woman’s black stockings and make-up -- she is shown performing the surprisingly lascivious song on a proscenium stage. On the images, Flores overlays colored circles that mimic spotlight gels.

Given the wide-eyed wariness of Garland’s chosen facial expressions, the colors seem like predators stalking her around the stage. Red, yellow and blue pin her to the curtain, stun her mid-note and finally chase her off into the wings. Color is cast as a dangerous beauty, which neatly flips expectations and makes these drawings crackle.

David Kordansky Gallery, 510 Bernard St., Chinatown, (323) 222-1482, through March 8. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.davidkordanskygallery.com.

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After the party, the depletion

Entropy is the tendency of a natural system to level out into a depleted state of homogeneity. A familiar subject in art since the 1970s, it puts on unexpected party clothes in the sly work of London-based artist Merlin Carpenter.

For his L.A. debut at Overduin and Kite, dedicated to Belgian menswear designer Raf Simons, Carpenter held an opening day English garden party inside the gallery, complete with Laura Ashley coverings on the tables and Pimm’s cups to imbibe. During the event, he splashed black paint on eight white-primed canvases on the main room’s large wall and a ninth on the opposite wall, while a 10th was scrawled with socially correct graffiti (“I drive a Prius”) and a heart.

The party is now over, and viewers see the residue. An aluminum stepladder, presumably used to reach the upper canvases, stands to one side, functioning as a modest pedestal for a bottle of floral-scented cologne reportedly sprayed on the paintings’ stretcher bars. The thick, short slashes of paint rendered with a wide brush were applied with considerable velocity, since splatters reach the ceiling and mar the floor. One imagines visitors scurrying in flight at the opening.

In one canvas, the heavy black splatter was aimed directly at the juncture of white canvas and white gallery wall, and in another the linear black strokes are elegantly self-contained, recalling Asian calligraphy. In a third work, someone -- the artist? a partygoer? the gallerist? -- scratched graffiti into the fat black line, which trails off the canvas and slides several feet along the wall.

These expressive marks, empty of specific meaning, are like mysterious notes in a bottle washed up on shore, telling of irretrievable, far-away events. “You had to be there” isn’t much of a revelation, but the social engagement of Carpenter’s installation is not confined to the past.

Looking at these paintings one wonders how the objects will change in the future. What happens when they are dislodged from this commercial space, with its artfully splattered environment and photo-documented back story, and are dispersed to their next assortment of venues (collector’s living room, museum gallery or storage space)? Do they lose energy? Or, do they gain a narrative trail of social experience that defies consumption?

Carpenter applies ideas of entropy to cultural systems, rather than natural ones, which would seem to be a contradiction. More than the painting per se, the problematic Catch-22 provides this work’s appeal.

Overduin and Kite, 6693 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 464-3600, through March 15. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.overduinandkite.com.

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Portraying futility through wrecks

A van tipped over on its side, a four-by-four truck run into a ditch, a flashlight resting on the pavement, a rearview mirror reflecting unspecified smoky disturbances in the distance, a pickup in flames -- Juanita Meneses’ six recent paintings and 23 drawings record fragmentary scenes of automotive mayhem. Smash ‘em, crash ‘em excitement, however, is overwhelmed by a melancholic sense of futility.

In her debut exhibition at Sam Lee Gallery, Meneses locates her delicately drawn vehicles in empty fields of white paper or, in the paintings, desert landscapes rendered in thin washes of color. Suggestions of surveillance and pursuit are everywhere.

Trucks kick up dust as if peeling out in haste, while smoke rises from distant hillsides. Whether war zone or border territory, the scenes are punctuated with weaponry -- an occasional tank, jet or rifle.

“Stuck” is emblematic. The painting shows a flaming field of orange in which a crevice has opened wide and the front wheels of an official-looking vehicle are caught in the gap. The driver’s door is open, but the driver has apparently fled. Lovely clouds of green, blue and yellow rise up from spinning rear wheels. The painting is a poetic meditation in which life, characterized by drama and violence, is brought to an unresolved standstill. As such, it feels just right.

Sam Lee Gallery, 990 N. Hill St., Chinatown, (323) 227-0275, through March 15. Closed Sundays through Tuesdays. www.samleegallery.com.

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Mixing science and intuition

“Before and After Science” is a modest group show at Richard Telles Fine Art that brings together a dozen mostly recent works, mostly drawings, all of them abstract. Systems, which might be associated with scientific thought, are leavened by intuitive forms of knowledge.

Barry Le Va exploits mathematical conundrums as if they are musical notations, and Steve Roden translates sound patterns into color shapes and linear networks. Gesture competes with structure in Lecia Dole-Recio’s spray-painted and corrugated cardboard collages.

In the compelling “Lantern,” the show’s only large-scale work, Will Fowler paints a loose grid in white and indigo on collaged magazine pages, and he interrupts the structure with map-like pathways in red. Elements don’t quite cohere, but the painting gains unexpected tensile strength from the formal pileup.

Additional works are on view in an adjunct space around the corner from the gallery, at 176 N. Martel Ave.

Richard Telles Fine Art, 7380 Beverly Blvd., L.A., (323) 965-5578, through March 8. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.tellesfineart.com.