LA CIENEGA AREA

Ynez Johnston is a veteran California painter and printmaker who pushes decorative fantasy to the point of obsession. Working with oil paint, casein and chemical dyes on such largely porous materials as papier mache and silk, Johnston creates dense, map-like calligraphies of biomorphic forms and mystical creatures that appear to combine the exotic hieroglyphs of Indian, Oriental and Mayan cultures with the personal iconographies of Klee and Miro.

While the results are most clearly an acquired taste, they also create an interesting dialectic between automatic doodling and pre-conceived structure, as if a city planner had inherited a simple outline by Le Corbusier, then thrown all caution to the winds by including architectural significations from every culture that ever existed. It is this balancing act between deliberate aesthetic pluralism and unrestrained self-indulgence that gives the work much of its edge. Johnston’s most successful works simply explode the boundaries between image and ground, East and West, modernism and its historical sources, to create true, idiosyncratic hybrids.

Also on display is a series of recent bronze and painted wood sculptures produced in collaboration with Johnston’s husband, John Barry. Whether taking the form of Oriental obelisks or ancient mythical creatures, Johnston’s predilection for embellishment is undiminished. The object itself becomes metamorphosed into a free-standing message board, its form submerged under the weight of an indecipherable “empire of signs.” (Mekler Gallery, 651 N. La Cienega Blvd., to April 25.)