What happens naturally

Per Kirkeby’s subdued paintings move at a glacial pace: slowly, steadily and with unstoppable forcefulness. At L.A. Louver Gallery, nine new oils on canvas eschew eye-grabbing flash for the incremental processes of nature, both botanical and geological.

The life cycles of organic matter, including seasonal moss, perennial underbrush and century-spanning trees, take shape across the densely packed surfaces of Kirkeby’s fecund canvases. Rocks, dirt and air are similarly transformed, with the effects of erosion, earthquakes and volcanoes suggesting time-frames that make the human life span seem a flash in the pan.

There’s something humbling about Kirkeby’s profoundly unsentimental works. Neither expressive nor bombastic, they’re not touchy-feely explorations of the artist’s emotions. Yet there’s plenty of room for affect, for finding connections and metaphors for human struggles and sentiments.

Kirkeby’s paintings are not about nature -- if nature is thought of as a realm apart from human activity and ingenuity. It’s more accurate to think of his quietly magisterial works as being about natural processes -- gradual developments and snail-paced transformations that animals (including humans) are mixed up in. Architectural structures, and what could be roads or ancient stone walls, bring cultural activity into his abstract pictures, where artifice plays an essential role.

Each of Kirkeby’s sensual images is as much a picture of the natural landscape as it is a jumbled deposit of painterly techniques and procedures. Their palette rarely strays from verdant greens, earthy browns and sky blues.

Some pictures seem to be visual encyclopedias of the ways paint can be applied: thick, thin, watery translucent and dry brushed. There are linear silhouettes, impenetrable clumps, crashing cascades of color, atmospheric expanses and flicks of pigment no bigger than a grain of sand.

Most resemble several paintings superimposed atop one another. These include conventional landscapes as well as views that recall topographic maps and geological diagrams that reveal layers of bedrock and beyond. Imagine what Paul Cezanne might have painted if he had lived in the digital world.

Using nothing but paint, Kirkeby plays the Frenchman’s jittery, faceted landscapes against the look of digitally transmitted imagery, marshaling both to survey a slow view of the big picture. This is only the second solo show in Los Angeles for the 66-year-old painter, who was born in Copenhagen and lives just outside the city. (His first was eight years ago.) It’s not to be missed, especially at this pace.

L.A. Louver Gallery, 45 N. Venice Blvd., (310) 822-4955, through June 18. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.lalouver.com

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Gripping scenario of doom, isolation

If Martin Luther had been a Surrealist and not the 16th century theologian who led Germany’s Protestant Reformation, he might have made work that looks like Erick Swenson’s room-size sculpture at Q.E.D., a new gallery that is a partnership between David Quadrini (of Dallas’ Angstrom Gallery) and Elizabeth Dee (of New York’s Elizabeth Dee Gallery).

Swenson’s super-realistic sculpture depicts a life-size snow-white deer that appears to be melting into a big icy puddle. Contorted from the struggle, the young buck’s legs are splayed every which way, its head twisted almost backward, its ribs visible and its chin nearly resting on the frozen ground. Icicles hang from its antlers and rear leg. Yet the scrawny mammal holds its head upright, conveying a dignified tranquillity -- and no regrets -- despite its impending doom.

Think of the wooly mammoths made of fiberglass at the La Brea Tar Pits; as one adult sinks to its death, another adult and child look on helplessly, their pathos made timeless and silent by the statuary.

Swenson’s sculpture is the indoor, updated version of the scenario. In tune with its times, it replaces family dynamics with individual isolation. Naturalistic color gives way to sanitized whiteness. The organic burble and odor of the tarry ooze are eliminated in favor of archival synthetics, including resin and polystyrene. And production-value skyrockets: Early theme-park artifice (or good-from-a-distance illusionism) is replaced by the breathless perfectionism of photographic close-ups (or the fastidious detail of big-budget movies).

It’s hard to imagine a limit to the elaborately theatrical installations the Surrealists might have concocted if they had had access to Swenson’s materials. In place of such libidinous outrageousness, the young Texas artist serves up a 16-by-20-foot tableau in which the only sign of life is about to disappear into whiteness. It’s art’s last gasp before dissolving into Luther’s fantasy of a world of pure spirit, a sanctified place uncorrupted by the deceitfulness of imagery and free of the fleshy tug of bodies. Chilling but true.

Q.E.D., 2622 S. La Cienega Blvd., (310) 204-3334, through July 2. Closed Mondays.

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A sexy touch to life’s little glories

Ellen Phelan handles paint with such whiplash mastery that she could probably make anything look beautiful. At Patricia Faure Gallery, 12 hefty oils on linen she painted over the last 18 months are mysterious, sexy and suffused with just the right touch of dread.

For Phelan, looking good isn’t good enough. Without a jolt of menace -- or a hint of grim events beyond one’s control -- attractive paintings are merely pretty pictures that quickly fade from memory.

All of Phelan’s blurry paintings are based on snapshots from her family scrapbook and other pictures taken more recently. The imagery is utterly conventional: birthday parties, vacations, games of dress-up, afternoon naps and long lunches in sun-drenched restaurants.

In the back gallery, 148 simply captioned inkjet prints of enlarged scrapbook photos paint a picture of a perfectly ordinary middle-class upbringing: kids growing up, parents aging gracefully (and otherwise) and grandparents falling further into the background. Even as a group, Phelan’s digital prints are not as engaging as a single painting. Her exquisite oils resemble over- or underexposed photographs. The ones of innocent kids recall newspaper pictures of children to whom unspeakable tragedies have happened.

The ones of Phelan’s husband looking away from the camera are more powerful because they’re more open-ended. Free of the manipulative tug of nostalgia, they capture the incidental splendor of ordinary moments, transforming such insignificant occurrences into potent pictures of life’s little glories, which often vanish as swiftly as they arrive.

Patricia Faure Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, (310) 449-1479, through June 18. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.patriciafauregallery.com.

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A method to the crookedness

If you can’t stand it when a picture’s not hanging straight, Yunhee Min’s handsome abstractions will drive you nuts. At Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, every one of the artist’s seven paintings looks as if it has been installed by someone who doesn’t know how to use a level -- or just doesn’t care about getting the job done right.

The crookedness is made more emphatic by the refinement of Min’s well-crafted works. Each consists of three or four wide bands of color that run vertically. The edges of each band, which have been applied with a roller, form sharp, parallel lines. And Min’s color combinations are peculiarly sophisticated, sometimes running from olive to sea-foam to aqua and at others juxtaposing burgundy, purple, eggplant and brown. The shifts in tint are smooth and rhythmic.

Min’s painting are too big to straighten with your hands, gently tipping up a corner when no one’s looking. Worse, it’s impossible to correct the tilt in the mind’s eye. Leveling a painting’s top throws the bottom edge further askew. And vice versa. That’s when you realize that Min’s canvases are trapezoids. The left and right edges are parallel, but the left sides of each are 2 inches shorter than the right. A hint of perspectival recession sneaks into the flat planes of color, which expand (as if breathing) as you scan from left to right. As soon as the mind recognizes the shape of the canvases, the body’s internal equilibrium is no longer thrown off by their untraditional geometry. The visual dynamics are mild yet satisfying. Heightening perception, Min’s tasteful works simultaneously demonstrate how quickly we get used to new things.

Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles Projects, 5795 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, (323) 933-2117, through June 18. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.vielmetter.com.