La Cienega Area

The Mexican Consulate of Los Angeles is sponsoring a nationally traveling exhibition of abstract mixed-media works by Mexican artist Ana Gojman, and a local gallery offers a look. Accompanying literature says that the artist is interested in the merger of science and art, and that her square formats refer to the geometric shapes used as building blocks in the ritual practices and physical discoveries of ancient Mexican civilizations. We’re also told the work was inspired by the artist’s reconnection with her native land of Mexico.

These far-flung concerns are packed into light-handed, pastel abstractions in which actual red clay, leaves, twigs, sand and volcanic rock are mixed with purple, pink or sky blue pigment. From atmospheric color fields, Gojman sends up crusty horizontal bands of mixed media then sketches quick wisps of color so that works suggest hazy, reeded marshes. In works called “Fragments,” craggy textures form a picture-frame border surrounding a central color field, and little marks, gouges and scratches look like ancient scribbles eroded by time.

For an American art public raised on color field in the ‘50s, the sample of work on view lacks bite and is too prettified. But in one small piece where Gojman limits her colors to glossy ebonies and uses her instinctive sculptural sense to carve a gnarled black maelstrom burrowing an endless hole in the middle of a dark canvas, we get a sense of the range of her hand and the cosmic content underlying her diverse tacks. (Heritage Gallery, 718 N. La Cienega Blvd., to Sept. 30.)

--MARLENA DONOHUE