Feeling engulfed? It must be love

Roland Barthes’ “A Lover’s Discourse,” the 1977 book from which the appropriately seductive group show now at Peres Projects takes its name, dissects the experience of romantic love into 80 individual components, beginning with what may be the most intoxicating: “s’abimer / to be engulfed: Outburst of annihilation which affects the amorous subject in despair or fulfillment.” In place of a press release the exhibition offers this list -- languor, dependency, drama, jealousy, tenderness, remembrance, suicide and so on -- coyly leaving it to viewers to draw connections between the book (which isn’t cited), the subject and the six artists involved.

It is a testament to the curatorial intelligence of the show, which was organized by artist Dean Sameshima, that those connections are neither obvious at a glance nor mistakable upon closer engagement. Like the terms in Barthes’ book, which he calls “figures” and insists fall in no particular order (“It is the very principle of this discourse,” he writes, “that its figures cannot be classified: organized, hierarchized, arranged with a view to an end”), the works are discreet expressions of the same universal phenomena, each conveying -- whether in their subject matter or effect on the viewer -- something of the sensation of being engulfed.

It is telling that of all the works in the show, the most overtly and eye-catchingly sexy are ultimately the least resonant.

Sakiko Nomura’s sultry black-and-white photographs of nude young men sprawled across crumpled sheets, standing silhouetted in doorways and gazing listlessly out windows, for instance, are gorgeous but too obviously so. After the first alluring glance, they feel rather generic -- more fantasy than feeling.

Nobuyoshi Araki’s several suites of Polaroids, which alternate between images of flowers and images of Asian women in some state of undress, bound in a variety of erotic positions, have a similar effect. They’re fine pictures for what they are -- the flowers are lovely and the portraits make for perfectly decent porn, if that’s your taste -- but the juxtaposition is a cliche and doesn’t elevate either to any particularly interesting new level.

If there’s anything that distinguishes art from porn it’s ambiguity, and that’s what makes most of the rest of the works in the show far more seductive.

Marcos Rosales’ cobweb-like sculptures of spindly black macrame, one of which snakes through a hole in the floor into the basement gallery below, are captivating creations, both elegant and strange. Their beauty is complicated -- I want to say undermined, but that may be simply my prudishness -- by an eight-minute video from the same artist involving a grotesquely unsexy character spouting arcane academic theory, and animated footage of black ropes snaking in and out of various individuals’ bodily orifices (mostly the nether ones).

Terence Koh’s one untitled sculpture -- an intriguing monument of baroque white porcelain and sleek black mirrored glass -- showcases that artist’s talent for evocative surfaces. Annette Kelm’s “Friendly Tournament,” a series of photographs depicting the same black-and-white bull’s-eye studded with an increasing number of holes, is a clever spin on the experience of relationship.

The show’s most memorable works are a selection of seemingly random, snapshot-like photographs by Heinz Peter Knes. His subjects include a number of handsome, shirtless young men but also a fully clothed young woman with an intelligent and challenging gaze, an awkward adolescent couple, a misty freeway interchange, and a simple view of sunlight bursting through a gathering of trees.

There is a place for fantasy, but it is interesting that Barthes doesn’t include it among his 80 figures. The real substance of love lies rather in these sorts of stirring, ordinary moments, drawn from the fabric of life.

Peres Projects, 969 Chung King Road, Los Angeles, (213) 617-1100, through March 25. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.peresprojects.com

Energy bursts from wooden forms

On paper, the conceptual underpinnings of Alison Saar’s first exhibition with L.A. Louver might easily be construed as simplistic. Most of the sculptures revolve around stylized female figures resembling African totems and a few familiar, racially inflected symbols -- primarily hair, black birds and cast iron skillets.

In person, however, the works have an intensity of presence that transcends easy characterizations, thanks to masterly manipulation of basic but evocative materials.

The figures are carved out of wood and coated either in paint or scraps of hammered ceiling tin, resulting in a warm, folksy spectrum of tones and textures. Though stiff, they’re full-bodied and sensual, their postures bursting with energy. Their hair is made from strands of thick, black wire and its abundance, as in much of Saar’s previous work, is beguiling and formidable.

In “Cache,” hair snakes from the head of a sleeping figure into an enormous, yarn-like ball. In “Treetops,” it’s lifted in tangled locks by three small black birds. In “Tango” it stretches from the heads of two individual figures into a thick knot between them, binding them in a way that feels simultaneously intimate and violent.

The rich materiality of the work enriches its political dimension -- as in “Suckle,” a wall installation of cast iron pans, each molded with a single breast -- and lends an elemental quality that feels almost magical. One of the most enchanting is “4N’20,” which consists of a single wood figure, roughly hewn and stained a deep, dirty red, with a tree branch growing from the center of her chest, on which three black birds are perched. It’s a small work -- only 30 inches tall -- but a startlingly commanding presence in the room.

L.A. Louver, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955, through March 25. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.lalouver.com

Caught between pigment, likeness

As pleasant as it can be to lose oneself in the experience of paint for paint’s sake, freed from the bonds of representation, there is a special sort of thrill to that moment when, stepping back from a canvas, a seemingly chaotic mass of brushstrokes crystallizes suddenly into a crisp, recognizable image.

The tension between these two states -- between pigment and likeness -- pervades Belgian painter Cindy Wright’s first exhibition at Mark Moore Gallery, her American debut. Stand at the center of the moderate-size gallery and the nine large paintings within view seem to flicker in and out of focus with a few steps in one direction or another -- from a loose swarm of colored daubs to something startlingly photographic and back again.

Enriching the effect is Wright’s discomfiting choice of subjects and her careful attention to surfaces. Six of the 10 paintings in the show are portraits, most captured at uncomfortably close range. Of the remaining, one depicts the head of a presumably dead deer, lying on the ground; two are magnified views of red meat; and the last is a similarly magnified view of the skin of someone’s palm.

The image on the invitation, which was sold before the opening and didn’t make it into the show -- unfortunate because, even in reproduction, it’s unnervingly absorbing -- depicts glistening strips of raw meat stacked neatly into a Richard Serra-like cube.

The juxtaposition of human skin, animal skin and meat is both alarming and seductive. The visual through-line is the light that bathes these surfaces, which Wright renders with consummate skill.

Particularly striking is a pairing on one wall of the palm piece with the blown-up view of a sleeping man’s face floating horizontally against a glowing white ground. Both are illuminated by a strong, white light, and the effect of this light sliding across the skin animates the entire canvas.

Mark Moore Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., A-1, Santa Monica, (310) 453-3031, through March 25. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.markmooregallery.com

A nontraditional use of photos

“Hi Res/Low Res,” an uneven but lively show at Newspace, presents two artists having fun with photographs outside the traditional point-and-shoot, print-and-frame mentality.

Wayne Chen, who works primarily as a graphic designer, processes them into large digital collages. More specifically, he processes other people’s photographs -- those made by actual photographers (Gregory Crewdson, Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince and Nan Goldin, for instance) as well as those taken of nonphotographic work (by Fred Tomaselli, Dan Flavin, Vanessa Beecroft, David Salle and many more) -- into frenetic compositions of his own.

Many of these are overwhelmingly cluttered, hampered by the pixel-y, plastic-y flatness that plagues digital imagery, and not especially memorable. In those where he manages to open up a little space, however -- “Internal Blackout,” “I Love,” “The Seeds of Time” and “No. 1” -- an interesting dynamic emerges between the various elements, suggesting a curious sort of purgatory populated by echoes of vaguely familiar imagery.

Mary Younakof takes her own photographs, mostly of dolls and Virgin Mary figurines, then cuts them out and curls, bends, twists and layers them, creating large, three-dimensional wall hangings. Most striking is a suite of four involving clouds of disembodied plastic doll heads floating like columns of smoke against a solid black ground.

Also by Younakof is a video called “Beyond the Red Door,” which follows the artist -- dressed in a costume made from photographs of corrugated tin (also on display in the show) and who hobbles like a mechanical doll -- through various locales in search of the tin wall from which her costume derives, into which she will camouflage herself. It’s an appealingly silly adventure distinguished by the artist’s irresistible wiggling gestures.

Newspace Los Angeles, 5241 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 469-9353, through March 25. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.newspacela.com