Works of the Surreal Skew Familiar Images

Surrealism, where is thy sting?

In its original incarnation early in the century, surrealism shocked the senses with dreamlike images. Today, soft-core surrealism is an established part of pop culture, from the psychedelia of the ‘60s to the nonlinear videos on MTV.

All of which means the two examples of contemporary surrealism at the Orlando Gallery, from David Hidalgo and Kathy Reinoehl, don’t have as much expressive voltage as they once might have.

Hidalgo taps into surrealism’s basic tenets of irrational juxtaposition and manipulated space. His scenes provide just enough visual information and familiar objects to register with the world we know and live in, but things are always at least slightly askew. He aspires to the standard surrealist playground: dream logic.

Of course, dreams are an intensely personal domain, stock Freudian interpretations aside. The appeal of Hidalgo’s art (like that of Salvador Dali) is in the psychological leanings of the beholder.

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The coyly entitled “Art and the Self-Conscious” offers a sensual scenario--a silhouette in a shower, a languid woman, a pair of disembodied, folded hands--that may trigger interest of the erotic sort, depending on one’s perspective.

“Rose Color Spectacle” is a portrait of a woman, made peculiar by an inexplicable mask/screen over her face and tiny details such as a falling nude male and a beetle.

The largest, and dreamiest, painting of the lot is “A Season of the XY Cycle,” in which a disjointed figure floats in a scene with no apparent sense of physical grounding. An odd swatch of red fabric and apparitional amoebas contribute to the sense of dislocation.

In “Un Dia de Dali,” Hidalgo goes suitably over the top with his visual mishmash. Scenes, objects and figures--including Dali’s familiar face--are at different angles in fashionable disarray, asking the artistic question: Which way is up? In these paintings, Hidalgo shamelessly, and entertainingly indulges the old surrealist trick of keeping things up in the air.

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Gallery-mate Reinoehl relies on a subtler form of surrealism in her nine-painting “Passport” series. Reinoehl’s impressionistically painted images of portals and stretches of road convey a metaphysical journey through one’s life. The text accompanying each painting helps to organize the series into a narrative context, but the images speak for themselves.

“Light Speed” depicts a dove flying out a doorway toward the light, leaving behind an egg cracked open on a black and white parquet floor. “Out of Chaos” views a congested city skyline from a distance. “Continuum” shows a tunnel fading into a highway, winding into infinity, a handy visual metaphor for existential progression.

These images could amount to so much metaphysical kitsch, but Reinoehl manages to keep our interest up and cynicism at bay.

* “Passport,” art by Kathy Reinoehl, and “Visions,” art by David Hidalgo, through Friday at Orlando Gallery, 14553 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. Open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. Call (818) 789-6012.