ART REVIEWS : Toon’s Works Show Subtle, Sophisticated Touch

The new paintings by Carolee Toon at Post Gallery are considerably more sophisticated--and simpler--than any of her previous highly refined abstractions. Matter-of-factly installed, her six new works stand out as one of the most beautiful exhibitions in recent memory.

No tricks or gimmicks dress up Toon’s mature works. Each consists of one, two or four square pieces of plywood, onto which the artist has painted an exquisitely textured surface of nearly microscopic precision.

Color subtly seeps out of Toon’s paintings, like a delicate, almost undetectable flavor that melts on your tongue before you know it’s there. Her best surfaces don’t look like they’ve been applied with a brush but seem instead to have simply drifted onto the plywood.

“Moonglow� looks like a magnified section of the moon as it rises above the horizon on a crystal-clear night. This gorgeous painting appears to be nothing but congealed light, intangible puffs of color that float through the atmosphere.

Likewise, “Green Silk� creates the impression that it’s the blend of an impenetrable chalkboard and a swath of translucent fabric rustling in the wind. “Shades,� “Dust, Dusk� and “Silvery� embody the feel of mimeograph liquid, flecks of dust and softly buffed sheets of steel. Each of these finely textured, superficially Minimalist works has a powdery presence of surprising fragility. They let meaning unfold slowly, according to its own proclivities.

As another painter once said, “What you see is what you get.� The difference between his abstractions and Toon’s is that with hers, what you see always exceeds what you can get--especially if you believe that the experience of abstract art can be translated into words.

Profoundly open-ended--and potentially endless--Toon’s paintings let viewers luxuriate in perceptions that gradually drift into consciousness. Her works flesh out a sensual territory that you can sense, even if you can’t put your finger on it.

* Post Gallery, 1904 E. 7th Place, (213) 488-3379, through March 30. Closed Sunday through Tuesday.

*

L.A. Mystique: With a new group of color photographs, William Leavitt turns away from his career-long exploration of the fakery that animates the movie industry and toward the mystique associated with the city of Los Angeles itself. At Margo Leavin Gallery, 10 intriguing C-prints depict a shadowy world in which mundane details hint at unfathomable mysteries without giving anything away.

Shot at night, all of Leavitt’s pictures make the city look like an apparition, as substantial as an illusion and as fleeting as a dream or nightmare. The longer you scrutinize these photos, however, the more their charged atmospheres fade away. With time, they look less like backdrops for dramatic narratives and more like quietly mesmerizing studies of the uncertainty at the root of modern urban experience.

Each of Leavitt’s long, narrow prints consists of between two and five separate scenes, each surrounded by a halo of darkness. Often these generic, outdoor scenarios are very similar to one another, if not identical. “Double Red Building� shows two views of the same structure, shot from slightly different angles. “Corrugations� presents three views of a shiny metal shed, from two perspectives.

“Four Part Swimming Pool� and “Extended Park in Fog�--respectively measuring nearly 4- and 5-feet long--suggest that the more points of view from which you see something, the less you actually know about it. As you follow the sequence of images from left to right, very little changes. Time seems to stand still as conventional narrative sequences go nowhere. Rather than disappear, mystery intensifies.

Leavitt’s images thus represent something like the photographic equivalent of the Heisenberg principle: The more closely something is scrutinized, the more uncertainty is revealed. The city of Los Angeles has more built-in intrigue than a movie can possibly match.

* Margo Leavin Gallery, 812 N. Robertson Blvd., (310) 273-0603, through March 23. Closed Sunday and Monday.

*

Fruit Bearing: It’s hard to get excited about Martha Alf’s drawings and photographs, but it’s also hard not to like them in a benign way. At Newspace Gallery, the artist’s trademark still lifes of various types of pears are interspersed with color photographs of museum interiors, vases of flowers and more pears--alone, in pairs, trios and groups of four.

Alf’s pears are always set on a flat surface, not far behind the picture plane. Because they are studiously rendered from a point of view that brings your eye down to their level, their scale is ambiguous. Neither monumental nor ordinary, the pears hover somewhere between.

Alf’s glossy, supersaturated photographs of narcissus stems, set against hot red backdrops, lack the delicacy of her lovingly shaded drawings. The four photos of museum interiors, from 15 years ago, depict open windows and include paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt and Sir Joshua Reynolds, as if viewers needed to be told that Alf’s drawings are about serenity.

Although her meticulously crafted images are indeed calm, the anthropomorphic narratives they suggest actually get the upper hand. It doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to read two pears as plump women leaning together, to whisper or kiss. Or to see a trio of pears as a group of friends engaged in lively conversation.

In the end, these hints of metaphor leave you wanting more from Alf’s pictures, which is probably just what the artist wants. Although this feeling may not be particularly satisfying, it’s better than to be left wanting less.

* Newspace Gallery, 5241 Melrose Ave., (213) 469-9353, through March 16. Closed Sunday and Monday.

*

Wet Paint: Linda Besemer’s eye-grabbing paintings at Richard Heller Gallery are so fresh they look as if they might have been made right on the gallery’s walls. So little time seems to have passed since they were painted that they still appear to be wet.

Although neither of these illusions turns out to be true, they capture some of the immediacy Besemer’s abstractions articulate. Instantaneous appeal is their best feature, with long-lasting attraction coming in a close second.

Nothing but paint makes up these juicy works. Five moderately sized round ones consist of a thin skin of white acrylic, over which the artist has carefully smeared hot rainbows of synthetic color to form a set of concentric circles. Abuzz with visual energy, these snazzy targets recall the rings around Jupiter and such art historical precedents as Robert Delaunay, Frantisek Kupka, Jasper Johns and Kenneth Noland.

To make one of her taut, round paintings, Besemer lays down a thick, multicolored stripe along the circle’s radius. She then uses a homemade compass-like tool to spread the unmixed acrylic over the white ground. Although each piece is finished in one fell swoop, there’s no room for error. A remarkably high mortality rate plagues these paintings.

Two rectangular works, measuring a walloping 8-by-16-feet, also stick to the wall like adhesive appliques. As cool and impersonal as Besemer’s smaller images, they appear to be crosses between Gerhard Richter’s spectacularly unnatural abstractions and Morris Louis’ colorfully stained raw canvases.

Despite their technical bravura, Besemer’s works downplay the importance of expressive gestures. Instead, they create the impression that they materialized out of thin air and just happen to have stuck to the wall.

* Richard Heller Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., through March 23. Closed Sunday and Monday.