ART REVIEW : A Slapstick Version of Love and Lust

SANTA MONICA —  Photographer Nic Nicosia examines love from a decidedly different point of view. By staging and then shooting theatrical tableaux exploring ideas of artifice and cliches of human behavior, Nicosia is like artists Cindy Sherman and Tina Barney in that his work is perfectly poised between the fake and the hyper-real.

Nicosia’s newest series, “Love & Lust,” consists of large black-and-white photographs, each of which is hand tinted a different color. That Nicosia was trained as a filmmaker is readily apparent in this work, as it reeks of the cheap melodrama of film noir ; centering on private sexual rituals, these flamboyantly cinematic, patently artificial pictures are obviously intended to evoke feelings of voyeurism. We see a man in his underwear sitting across the table from a life-size inflatable doll in lingerie, a young boy copping a feel from his unknowing date in a movie theater, and a man on a bed staring at a girl in a bra and skirt who stands with legs straddling an electric fan.

There is something intensely brittle and cold about these pictures--they resonate with a cruelty that may have to do with the fact that in exaggerating and slightly overplaying everything, Nicosia creates a slapstick version of love and lust. It’s as if he is caricaturing these human emotions. And, as in those desperately sexy Guess? jeans ads or the weakest moments of “Twin Peaks,” the sensuality in these pictures is so art-directed and coy that it comes off as mannered, empty and flat. This isn’t to say the work is bad--rather, it’s interesting work about bad feelings.

* Linda Cathcart Gallery, 924 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica , (213) 451-1121. To Aug. 17. Closed Sundays and Mondays.