A style still shaping our world

When it comes to certain types of contemporary abstract painting -- particularly of the young and stylish variety -- one frequent question is whether they might be better suited to the surface of a handbag, a duvet cover or a line of tableware. Not so with the work of Lorser Feitelson (1898-1978), the L.A.-based abstractionist whose influence, though vastly underacknowledged, is prominent in the fine art and design of today.

Feitelson’s mature, large-scale paintings, several dozen of which are assembled in a marvelous exhibition at Louis Stern Fine Arts, underscore the shallowness of so much contemporary abstraction. They also illuminate the possibilities neglected by painters with an overweening taste for fashion.

The earliest paintings in the show, which date from the late 1940s and fall under the rubric of Post-Surrealism (a movement Feitelson co-founded with his student and future wife, Helen Lundeberg, in the mid-1930s), feature loose, energetic forms clearly derived from nature and reminiscent of a number of early 20th-century styles. In the works from the early 1950s, however, the contours of these forms begin to straighten, their shading flattens into solid color, and any suggestion of spatial depth collapses as the images resolve into a single, two-dimensional plane of interlocking shapes. The transition is swift and profound.

Although many of these hard-edge works bear the same general title as their Post-Surrealist predecessors -- “Magical Forms” -- they reveal an entirely new kind of energy. It’s produced by the tension between forms, between plane and edge, between adjacent colors.

Feitelson maintains this tension with increasing mastery. By the early 1960s, his broad, blunt, stone-like forms achieve a rapt harmony. Then, as if by some magical process of refinement, they begin to grow thinner and thinner, eventually transforming entirely into slender, graceful lines. There is an element of genuine transcendence to this late work.

Through years of rigorous labor, Feitelson seems to have not merely simplified his forms but actually concentrated them. They stretch across his canvases like tense cords of pure energy -- not academic or analytical but human. Here they seem sensual, there cool and standoffish; here flirty or catty, there breathtakingly elegant.

The best of these works -- such as an untitled 1963 painting depicting two vivid orange lines that nearly kiss against a gorgeous periwinkle background -- are perfectly simple yet capable of engaging the eye for hours.

Louis Stern Fine Arts, 9002 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, (310) 276-0147, through July 12. Closed Sunday and Monday.

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Mingling mystery with the everyday

The seven large photographs in Deborah Mesa-Pelly’s current show at Sandroni Rey lead viewers through the shadowy corridors of a house that seems filled with ghosts. There is a faded quality throughout. The carpets and wallpaper are clean but dull with age; the sparse furniture is vaguely antique but lusterless. The air feels stagnant and the atmosphere profoundly hushed, so that not even the blue daylight from the windows seems to penetrate very deeply into the murky interiors.

The work assumes a subjective perspective that feels much like that of a child solitarily exploring the home of an aging relative she has been instructed not to disturb. Each image lingers on a fantastical occurrence of some sort -- the product of an excited imagination, perhaps, or evidence of a fissure between this world and some mysterious other dimension.

In one picture, “Cowboys and Indians,” a small pile of white plastic toys seems to be oozing out of a corner molding, led like an army of tiny guerrilla fighters by a little barking dog. In another, a sheet of white-paper garlands drapes across the top of a staircase, leaving a small opening that is brilliantly illuminated from behind, suggesting birth and death simultaneously.

Several images, in keeping with Mesa-Pelly’s previous work, involve a female figure but to largely disappointing effect. Were these models of a more interesting variety than that of the young, attractive art-school student, their presence might have been more compelling. As it is, they introduce an element of stylishness that effaces the mystery so charmingly evoked elsewhere with common craft-store materials.

The one possible exception is a delightfully strange image in which a woman on a chaise longue is wrapped almost entirely in gauzy piles of tulle.

Mesa-Pelly is one of several young, female, Yale-educated photographers who attracted a fair amount of press a few years ago for their focus on what one critic aptly characterized as “young women engaged in acts of a mysterious or ominous sort.” The general tone of this coverage -- with its focus on salability, sex appeal and the dubious specter of post-feminism -- was somewhat unfortunate. But Mesa-Pelly shows signs here of making good, specifically in beginning to outgrow the stamp of mentor (and Yale professor) Gregory Crewdson. Although this work still betrays the aspirations to fashion that can make his work, and that of his proteges, somewhat cloying, its best moments are quiet and somewhat raw. They suggest a promising attention to the magical potential of the everyday.

Sandroni Rey, 1224 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, (310) 392-3404, through June 21. Closed Sunday and Monday.

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Bold hues convey spirit of possibility

The colors in Stephen Curry’s new paintings, like those dyed into the hair of many an otherwise well-mannered teenager, are brash enough to risk the disapproval of those moderate souls to whom his fairly traditional imagery might under other circumstances appeal. It is also quite possible that these colors -- which resemble Jolly Rancher candies -- will fail to age well.

But considering the shock of pleasure the colors incite and the assurance with which they hold up to sustained contemplation, these are probably risks worth taking. The pictorial theme uniting the eight paintings assembled in this, Curry’s fourth exhibition at Koplin Del Rio Gallery, is verticality. The imagery, which frequently extends across several separate panels, includes trees, power lines, telephone poles and flagpoles, all rendered largely in silhouette, as though seen at dusk.

As Curry suggests in an artist’s statement, however, this skillfully wrought imagery is ultimately just a vehicle -- or more precisely an undercoat -- for the glassy strata of pigment that he dilutes with alkyd and actually pours over the surface of the images to suggest a tempestuous evening sky. In some works, each panel assumes a completely different color.

In “Out of Reach,” which depicts a telephone pole, the top panel is an electrifying shade of blue, the middle a fiery mix of red and orange, and the bottom a muted but intense olive green. Others, such as “Failing Light,” encompass a gradual shift from one hue to another -- in this case, from a rich, midnight blue at the top of four panels down through a luscious teal and into an oceanic swirl of turquoise and green.

Even when a single shade predominates, the surface remains active, swirling and churning with what seem internal waves of motion. Subtle these paintings are not. But in their audacity, they capture the spirit of what can be a mysterious and magical moment in each day, when night begins to fall and anything seems possible.

Koplin Del Rio Gallery, 464 N. Robertson Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 657-9843, through July 5. Closed Sunday and Monday.

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From the set of ‘The X-Files’

Every successful television show creates, among other things, a memorable visual world. In its nine seasons, “The X-Files” might be said to have created many. John Divola steps into a few of them quite literally in an intriguing new series of photographs taken on the set of the show during its last season (in the spring of 2002).

Now on view at Patricia Faure Gallery, the images reproduce a few familiar icons -- a desk cluttered with FBI files, a bulletin board plastered with photographs of bloodied crime victims -- but they focus largely on more banal spaces, such as an apartment house hallway, a shelving unit in a hospital and a generic Dallas interview room.

Divola’s style, in contrast to the gothic visual design that distinguished the show, is generally dry and analytic. Rather than tapping into any particular strain of narrative, he explores the structural foundations of fantasy: the plywood walls that separate the fictional world from the sound stage; the dust that gathers on neglected props; piles of building materials dumped in unoccupied sets.

The revelations he secures from this exploration are not especially surprising. We all know that these things are fake. But they do pose intriguing questions about the nature of our investment in fiction.

A notable example is a series of images involving a perfect replica of the “Brady Bunch” set that was apparently incorporated into one episode of “The X-Files.” Although a simulacrum of a simulacrum in actuality, the space contained within the set remains eerily, even poignantly, familiar.

Patricia Faure Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., B7, Santa Monica, (310) 449-1479, through June 14. Closed Sunday and Monday.