Hollywood

Los Angeles painter Edith Baumann-Hudson has chosen a path well-trodden by minimalists, and until this exhibition the work seemed to be lacking a vital spark. The basic format consists of rigidly parallel groupings of broad horizontal stripes of one color applied to a ground of another color. Although both the stripes and the grounds are hand-painted, the effect is usually so immaculate that the paintings seem inert, lacking a vulnerable, “human” aura. And the color duos--often red and black or bright-blue and black--tend to be firmly resistant to perceptual epiphanies.

But in “Blue/9 Pink No. 6,” Baumann-Hudson shifts into a luscious new mode. The painting looks as though a pale white veil was dropped over a light-blue field striped with pale-pink bars. The edges of the bars keep disappearing as you look at the canvas; they hum as if the painting was filled with radiant energy. Another strong piece is “Red/6 Red No. 9,” in which the bars of blackened red lined up on a spongy, bright-red ground read like slight depressions on the surface of the canvas. By shifting the hues and values of her colors and making brush strokes more apparent, the artist has given her work a new energy. (Newspace, 5241 Melrose Ave., to Feb. 10.)