Where internal, external meet

The photographs by Naida Osline at Acuna-Hansen Gallery are small, elegantly composed and exceptionally creepy. They depict the human body, but as it might appear in nightmares.

In one image, the toes of a full-sized, greenish-colored foot protrude from a woman’s mouth, creating a strangely fishlike profile. Another depicts two rows of teeth nestled between unidentifiable folds of hairy male flesh. Yet another presents a delicate white breast with a claw for a nipple.

All of the images are close-ups conveying a single, disfigured fragment of the body (no faces) positioned against a solid, neutral background. But for the refined lighting and dramatic use of shadow, they might resemble medical illustrations. Indeed, one gets the impression that Osline is cataloging something -- if not actual diseases, then perhaps a collective set of psychological ailments.

It’s stirring work, intelligently conceived and seamlessly executed, prosthetics and all. While the majority are unnerving, the best are also oddly beautiful: an elbow embedded with what looks like a glowing green golf ball, for example, or a graceful pointed foot marred by a hook-shaped knob on the heel.

We place a great deal of day-to-day faith in the stability of “this too, too solid flesh.” However, as anyone who’s ever nursed a mosquito bite well knows, that flesh is hardly fixed but permeable, easily punctured, and prone to inflammation at even the slightest disturbance. In this work, Osline assumes a role much like that of the mosquito: prodding the boundary between the internal and the external and reminding us not to take the division for granted.

Acuna-Hansen Gallery, 427 Bernard St., Los Angeles, (323) 441-1624, through March 22. Closed Sunday-Tuesday.

Urban portraits

in spray paint

Robert Russell’s first exhibition at Frumkin/Duval Gallery, titled “Drive By,” featured paintings of strangers randomly encountered on the street; his second, portraits of Echo Park gardeners. In this, his third, he continues in the same sociological vein with paintings of 10 male skateboarders.

The format of these works is consistent throughout. Each figure is depicted from the middle of the torso upward and viewed from just below eye level; each gazes directly at the viewer; all but one is shirtless. In a notable departure from previous, more traditional methods, each is rendered solely in black spray paint.

Russell’s technique is impressive. Manipulating a seemingly random assortment of planes and hard edges (produced by spraying over hand-held shields), he manages to capture the physical presence of each figure in remarkable detail, revealing in each body a casual athleticism and latent sense of agility. Equally adept is his encapsulation of that notoriously irreverent skater attitude. To one who spent much of her early adolescence pining over just these sorts of boys, their appealing combination of good humor, pride, insolence and indifference struck a familiar chord.

Conceptually, Russell’s choice of materials represents a commendable attempt to approach his subjects on their own terms, a gesture that resonates on several levels. The grittiness of the paint speaks of the street; the intuitive agility inherent in Russell’s process parallels that required in skateboarding itself; and the ephemerality of the images -- which seem thin and almost ghostly from a distance -- echoes that which characterizes the presence of the skater in the urban environment.

Although a more traditional method might have made for richer and ultimately more satisfying paintings -- there are two such examples, oil studies on the same subject, hanging in a side gallery -- the spray paint makes these consummate portraits: true in spirit as well as likeness.

Frumkin/Duval Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 453-1850, through Saturday.

Reinventing

the wheels

Much has been written about the effect of the automobile on architecture. Considerably less documented -- though more and more apparent -- is its influence on contemporary landscape art.

Dimitri Kozyrev, who grew up in Russia but got his master of fine arts degree in Santa Barbara (where he still resides), would be an ideal case study for such an examination. If the painters of the Hudson River School likely drew their inspiration from quiet country strolls, Kozyrev seems to find his on the freeway. In the eight graphite drawings that make up his current exhibition at Cirrus Gallery, the automobile is not a means of moving from one landscape to another but a primary structuring device -- the center from which landscape emanates.

Each drawing has a single horizon line -- it stretches like a taut string across the center of each page -- but anywhere from two to five different vanishing points, each anchoring a different fragment of roadside scenery. These fragments dissolve at the edges into the white of the page or else blur into one another, creating an effect that feels much like freeway driving, in which one constructs a coherent sense of landscape through the mental compilation of glances out a side window.

These compositions are compelling, but the real pleasure in the work is the drawing itself, which is exquisite. It is all quite small and clings tightly to each horizon line, which necessitates some stooping and squinting, but is rich and rewarding in its detail.

The scenery is familiar -- agricultural fields, rolling hills and beaches interspersed with stray buildings, road signs and overpasses. But Kozyrev has fun with it, covering certain areas with thick, masterful shading and leaving others with little but delicate outlines. One drawing trails off into an abstract assembly of boxy shapes, as though the pencil simply grew bored with rendering that particular string of buildings.

There certainly seems little reason to bemoan the presence of the automobile here, as there is so often in the context of architecture. It may say more about the power of good, intelligent drawing than anything else, however. Indeed it would be easy to follow this sort of drawing just about anywhere Kozyrev wanted to take it.

Cirrus Gallery, 542 S. Alameda St., Los Angeles, (213) 680-3473, through March 15. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Visual poetry in everyday objects

Cuban-born, Miami-based photographer Gory (Rogelio Lopez Marin) visited New York City for the first time on Sept. 9, 2001. Considering the profound nature of the devastation that followed, it is perhaps understandable that the photographs he took there -- assembled now in an exhibition at Couturier Gallery -- should be, if not consciously nostalgic, then just a tad old-fashioned.

They focus neither on the World Trade Center disaster nor on the citizens of New York but on the sort of magical inanimate details that a city produces in multitudes and that have been enchanting photographers for decades: the sculpture of an angel perched on the back of a moving van, a pile of severed taxi cab doors, a pear on the windowsill of a high rise apartment. It is a well-worn approach to the city and there’s little here that will surprise.

Furthermore, Gory’s signature hand-coloring of the images creates a strict sepia/cyan binary that can feel at times quite limiting. That said, Gory has a sharp eye for visual poetry and does capture a number of memorable moments.

The strongest are those images in which his Surrealist tendencies really take hold. Whereas in previous work, he manipulated negatives to produce instances of disruption and disjuncture, here he’s sought those qualities in the city itself.

In several images, he compacts space into a disorienting collage of flat planes. In other images, he plays with reflections in shop windows to produce interesting layering effects: a spine-like tree trunk across the torso of a mannequin’s dress, or a female face over a looming front of buildings.

The most striking depicts a sepia-toned horse that appears, though chained to a wall, to be galloping through a blue-gray street. An unusually high degree of contrast and a slight blur give the picture a flattened yet frenetic feel, which captures the feverish sense of experience that the city can inspire.

Couturier Gallery, 166 N. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 933-5557, through March 29. Closed Sunday and Monday.