Wilshire Center

Using paper gridded with lines R. Doen Toby fills hundreds of quarter-inch quadrants with small quick scribbles of conte, graphite or metallic pigment. From a distance, the works have a minimalist less-is-more elegance, along with the meditative rumblings of oriental calligraphy and color field abstraction.

In fact, Toby seems more a thinker than a paint pusher, as she views each mark as a diary entry concretizing a moment in time and space. One large horizontal piece has some 360 or so quadrants to represent each day in 1986. The shimmery uniformity of the little marks is broken up only by an occasional variation--a small red square to indicate some out of the ordinary event, or a tiny black mark to log the death of an acquaintance.

Toby’s works seem seeped in the crisis of figuration that spawned both conceptual and abstract art: how to convey intangibles like ideas, feelings, time, space, etc. without resorting to beleaguered literal depictions. However, this artist’s solution is so whisper soft and personal that it fails to communicate with most of us.(Kiyo Higashi Gallery, 8332 Melrose to Nov. 9).