Santa Monica

Cliff Benjamin used to make brightly colored abstract constructions that were adequately decorative but rather dull. He makes a quantum leap forward, however, with a new series titled “Black Ether.” Black-and-white charcoal and graphite drawings with an odd, fetishistic perfume, this is highly emotional, personal work that barges headlong into territory Benjamin carefully sidestepped in previous work. An inquiry into the subject of fear, “Black Ether” takes us into the dangerous zone where sexuality and evil overlap, and as with pastel drawings by David Lynch, one is simultaneously fascinated and repelled.

Introducing itself with a gothic handbill pertaining to witchcraft and the activity of devils, the series includes images of savage instruments of torture, a swirling black vortex, a convoluted horn with four heads (it puts one in mind of the bizarre gynecological tools featured in the film “Dead Ringers”), and configurations that look like spawning cells for a deadly plague. Lyrically rendered, this is nonetheless, extremely paranoid work--and very much in step with the sexual climate of the times.

Also on view are computer generated photographic images by David Levinthal. The subject of a concurrent photography exhibition at the Jan Kesner Gallery, Levinthal attempts to reveal the falseness of the myth of the American West in a series titled “The West.” Designed to illustrate how history has been debased by mass media--movies in particular--Levinthal discredits the visual vocabulary of the old West by showing us how cheaply it can be approximated. Levinthal creates his images by assembling dioramas out of plastic toys, which he then bathes in warm, dramatic light and shoots in soft focus with a Polaroid camera. We see wagon trains, gunslingers, rearing stallions, Indian braves--all the Western cliches, as familiar as the American flag itself.

Using toys in staged set-ups, Levinthal calls into question the authority of photographic imagery, and thus aligns himself with the Appropriationists (Appropriationist Laurie Simmons also photographs her toy collection--Barbie dolls are her area of expertise). Au courant though it is, Levinthal’s work can only be described as stilted, mute, and enervated; the only current of life one senses in these images is that of the artist arranging his toys. Moreover, the myth of the West is ultimately about the fundamental human need to believe in something beautiful and grand; Levinthal keeps his work on a superficial level and has little to say about the deeper issues his pictures raise. (Pence Gallery, 908 Colorado Blvd., to May 13, Jan Kesner Gallery, 164 N. La Brea, to May 13).