Long Beach

Craig Antrim’s mysterious symbology appears to have gotten a dose of domestic inflection in this round of paintings. Houses and house plants, strange but identifiable, vie with crosses and other more obscure images for cryptic emotional impact. Works like “Dark Wing” and “Succulent,” with their overt dual realities, bring to mind the colorful metaphysical painting of plants and swans by Hilma af Klint.

Antrim’s strongest paintings are large, pale, wax, oil and charcoal canvasses that merge human form with natural references, then connect to the cross--one of art’s most overworked symbols. Paintings like “Axis Mundi” link body and religious symbol via a rich black line that carves through the dense surface releasing color and igniting the edge. The symbol’s fire feels internal and seems to thaw the thick waxy surface so the warm colors beneath bleed through slightly like a blushing affirmation of life.

But if Antrim can refresh the symbolism of the cross, Jack Lillis’ paintings are a reminder that form can be blankly opaque when considered from the pure light of reason. Curiously, these are reverent little icons, tightly structured arrangements of simple shaped houses and circles drawn in sumi ink and embellished with gold-leaf. Yet their calculating, symbol-equals-meaning approach is stubbornly mute. Like the spinning cross at the heart of the red-and-black maze in “CHI-30” symbols in Lillis’ work suggest revolving doors. Sometimes they let you in, but just as often they mark a place only to keep you out. (Works Gallery, 16 W. 3rd St., to Feb. 19.)