In six new canvases, young L.A. painter Calvin Marcus uses simple, restricted means—just black paint and oil crayon—to improvise on a variety of motifs. The broad proportions of each panel suggest a cinema screen, on which Marcus scatters fragmentary images like outtakes from a dreamlike movie.
The works’ shared title, “Automatic Drawings,” is consistent with this rambling show’s look and feel, harking back to the Surrealists’ pet technique for accessing the unconscious mind through “chance” mark-making. The paintings have a childlike feeling, too, with cartoonish figures, faces and scenarios depicting a fanciful world of goggle-eyed dogs and flying cows.
While there’s much happening here image-wise, Marcus’s denial of context ensures that the works’ formal aspects are at least as significant as their ostensible subject matter. In every case, the playful action takes place against a featureless cream-colored background, on which the artist juxtaposes silhouetted forms (an elephant, a boiling cauldron, a mysterious aquatic animal) with more detailed images (Humpty Dumpty, a sprinting rabbit, a skyscraper) that jut in from one side of the painting like a pointing finger). Surrounded by empty space, these bits and bobs engage the imagination, while keeping the eye in constant motion.