A Show at Cirrus Gallery

Los Angeles

Four Variants by Joseph Albers construct a picture ultimately derived, it might be argued, from a Klee Arabian village, by strict overlay of transparencies. Anni Albers has a geometric print of optical parquetry. The main work is Bridget Riley's Dominance Portfolio (Blue, Green, Red) (1977), curvilinear pillars in a double serpentine, with a subtle modulation of colors. The evocation of feline form brings to mind O'Keeffe's famous disavowal of eroticism, and frankly laughs in its face. Another work of stunning technical virtuosity is Richard Anuszkiewicz's Blake Portfolio, some pages of which are here, notably one of vertical inlaid rectangles moving from red to yellow across a background moving from green to violet. The color combinations and the fineness of execution make a brilliant effect. John McLaughlin offers a print of pure simplicity, simply a plane of red close to a plane of azure.

Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg have representative works, the former showing control of line, the latter control of plane. Karl Benjamin has a particularly fine group of screenprints, a bright deployment of color. Alan D'Arcangelo organizes a transverse perspective with an optical fill-in to make a witty Landscape. Fine recent work by Ellsworth Kelly and John Baldessari (a variant of Mondrian's spectrum and a newspaper-fold photomontage) and Jules Engel (planes organized as quanta) are among the keen pieces. Sol LeWitt's Distorted Cubes (2001) is an homage to Albers by way of Eames, something that also harks back to pre-Francescan perspective. The show's title is, I take it, a sop to the Philistines in the downtime of what passes for a boom nowadays: "Flatline." Op on Pop? In the gallery parking lot you will see what looks like a reconstruction of Ezra Pound's Pisan accommodations, but it's actually the chain-link cage downtown residents park their cars in safely at night.

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