West Los Angeles

Freda Nessim’s first one-person show introduces a painter with a fondness for brightly colored, linear scenes of topical subjects and a folk-art-flavored style that sometimes offers a forthright, personal vision but often comes across as clunky and trite.

In “Protestors No. 2,” the striking animal-head effigies--stylized in an Ensor-like way--that a small group of demonstrators carry offer an allegorical intensity. Nessim’s “Necklace” offers a simple but disturbing image of a black man imprisoned by a tire hanging around his neck. Even the bristling gun emplacement dominating the tiny “Persian Gulf Seascape No. 4” has a strong, deliberately ungainly presence.

But other paintings from the past few years are ponderously stereotyped (such as “Prosecutor” with his finger pointing at the viewer) or ineptly rendered (“Musician No. 2” with his peculiar-looking guitar). In her most recent, more painterly works Nessim seems to be retreating from the social arena to dwell on blander subjects--plain-Jane portraits, a city landscape with a pecking bird--that don’t seem to stir up her passionate-observer’s view of the world. (Art Space, 10550 Santa Monica Blvd., to Feb. 25.)