Wilshire Center

Think of a cross between mid-career Matisse on amphetamines and neo-psychedelic art, and you’ve got a feel for the frenetically patterned, Day Glo-hued paintings of Linda Smith. Smith uses the doughy boneless figuration that Matisse coined in “The Dance” to describe couples sitting numbly side by side or facing off erotically while an intrepid doggie looks on. In “At Home,” islands of flat color outlined in heavy black Fauvish line and pockets of dense polka dots form the anatomy and clothing of a hapless couple crouched on a divan and gazing blankly at a TV screen. A shower of bright blobs and confetti specks scurries over the floor, walls and furniture, unifying and animating the composition like ants on picnic leftovers.

Concurrently, Janice DeLoof continues to make smallish works that couple repeating embossed shapes with Ruscha-like, air-brushed finishes of iridescent acrylic. The shapes are solitary cacti, empty overstuffed furniture or austere little chairs occupied by stiff suburban couples. Like an Edward Albee play, works exude a mute friction and a satiric juggling of animate and inanimate motivations: Clocks listen, chairs pose and tip coyly, but people are locked in affective paralysis. The works look autobiographical with lots of references to home, hearth and family members inhabiting the same compact shimmery stages but remaining worlds apart. (Ivey Gallery, 154 N. La Brea Ave., to June 18.)