Opposites Part of Their Nature

Gallery matchmaking can be a delicate task, and one in which the connection between artists isn’t always apparent. On first impression, the two artists now sharing space at the Century Gallery could hardly seem more dissimilar.

Martin Mondrus’ paintings deal with landscapes, mythology, biblical imagery and cities as viewed from a fringes-of-town perspective. Things are writ large, even when the paintings wax enigmatic. Brian Hollister, on the other hand, shows smallish square paintings, which seem steadfastly abstract, negating, as they do, content and relying on the expressive firepower of colors, forms and textures.

And yet, true to the exhibition title, “The Land: Tandem Solo Exhibitions,” this show is more than a meeting of disparate characters, flung together in a gallery for lack of something better to do. Each artist, in his different way, has a proximity to, and detachment from, the land as we know it. They incorporate visions of the land into their art, from virtually opposite angles.

Mondrus rarely takes the landscape art tradition at face value, as his art involves fantastical imagery and quasi-urban scenery. For his part, Hollister, the stronger of the two, creates canvases that manage to convey boldly the structures and persona of nature, almost in spite of themselves.

It doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to read nature imagery into Hollister’s Untitled paintings. We’re prone to find forest-like enclosures, the liquid rush of waterfalls or brooks, or the strange blending of colors found in the wild. Bumpy, tactile surfaces add to the impression of rough surfaces, beyond the flat planes of pure painting. The forces of nature announce themselves in Hollister’s works, without ever becoming specific.

Mondrus’ work on view here is a more complicated, and more confused matter. At times, the artist views urbanscapes from perches above or beyond the city, as in “The View from Mt. Washington” or “The View from Elysian Park,” a gray, dismal vantage point.

Elsewhere, though, the imagery turns sharply away from the concrete urban reality to biblical allegories, presented without the usual postmodern veneer of irony. In “Angel’s Flight,” winged visitors escort naked mortals up the stairway to heaven, while, in “Have I Seen God?,” a haggard older man contemplates a golden burst of light. A lumbering throng of humanity gazes out at a rainbow over a distant island in “The Promised Land.”

Amid such unabashedly mystical settings, the viewer returns to a landscape work like “The Pinnacle”--two trees on a rocky crag--and looks for religious symbolism, where there may be just two trees. Nature, and art about nature, works in strange ways--which could be the underlying theme of this dual show.

* “The Land: Tandem Solo Exhibitions,” through Feb. 9 at the Century Gallery, 13000 Sayre St., Sylmar. Gallery hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Friday, noon-4 p.m., Saturday; (818) 362-3220.

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Functional and Vehicular: Eric Stout’s glib, unusual show at Burbank’s Creative Arts Center is full of functional sculptural objects, from brass pipe candelabra to a tilting bookshelf and a hard triangular chair suitable only for ascetics. Off in another corner of the gallery is an area under the heading of “Raw Materials,” full of half-treated hunks of wood and metals--unfinished business.

But nothing prepares the visitor for the most prominent feature of the show, a piece called “Rusty.” This art purchase may require exchange of a pink slip. It is a rusted mini-pickup truck, its bed loaded with pieces of wood and metal ready to use for other artworks. Despite the sense that everything’s been done in this post-conceptual age, cars parked in galleries are still a rare thing. Vehicular aesthetics are still strange enough to warrant a look.

* “Things We Live With,” work by Eric Stout, through Jan. 30 at the Creative Arts Center, 1100 W. Clark Ave. in Burbank. Gallery hours: 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday; (818) 238-5397.