SANTA MONICA

Peter Saari is an amazingly deft technician who invents fragments of crumbling architecture as if they have been lifted from Italian villas. He fashions “Tile Fragments” that could date from the Roman Empire, as well as illusionistically patterned walls, entablatures, reliefs, broken cornices and a niche containing a sculptured head of a curly-haired youth. All these creations resemble solid chunks of stone and mortar, but they are actually hollow constructions of casein, gouache, acrylic and plaster on canvas stretched over wood.

Saari is a virtuoso of the trompe l’oeil genre, but his work has been limited by its emphasis on the decorative and the nostalgic. Several pieces in a current show, covering 1979 to 1985, are so repetitive that they seem to play out an elaborate formula. The encouraging note is that Saari also exhibits a couple of tough, crusty, gray pieces. A rectangular panel with cracked splotches of off-white material on a darker backing is dull, but a big “wall fragment” with three rows of arched insets is impressive because it finally replaces seductive prettiness with raw power.

Concurrently, four of Los Angeles’ most accomplished artists who happen to be women show representational works on paper. With her characteristic blend of classical repose and romantic mystery intact, Martha Alf revisits familiar themes of still lifes and rooftop landscapes. Her work moves so deliberately that the outlined edges and flat planes of a blue-violet “Eggplant” stand out as a new area of exploration.

It’s the near absence of color, the presence of architecture and the cozy aura of calm that make Joyce Treiman’s drawings of Palisades hillsides seem a departure for her. You can almost feel a Santa Ana wind blow through these gray-brown visions of Southern California landscape. Buildings nestle among dry brush and trees, as if they had grown old together.

D.J. Hall and Shirley Pettibone are each represented by a single, meticulously realistic tour de force. Hall’s portrait of herself and dealer Molly Barnes as two giddy blondes at a seaside restaurant deftly balances sarcastic criticism and celebration of the good life. The emotional tone of her work has matured along with her technique; she now waxes simultaneously anxious and mellow.

Pettibone’s lovely watercolor, “Calla Lily Triptych,” points out subtle order among the chaos of pink grasses, white blossoms and green leaves. Three separately framed panels sparkle with light as they suggest a limitless feast of natural patterns. (Tortue Gallery, 2917 Santa Monica Blvd., to Feb. 15.)