Michael G. Bauer’s “Meditational Love Drawings” at Circus Gallery

Here you will find a super-bright new gallery with a new super-young artist. Bauer is a wee babe of 25 who went to UCLA for undergrad and spent the last two years working on this group of drawings. His meditative practice of writing the word “Love” thousands of times creates pattern or shapes, as if the words themselves are like brush strokes, the end result looking like a freeform, more sophisticated Spirograph. Sometimes beautiful psychedelic flowers emerge, or sea creatures, while others are more abstract. While “Love” is used in most of the works, he also uses “High” or “Free” to create images. It may sound a little too much like a New Age doodle, but all the works prove to be delicate and completely mesmerizing. It’s great to see the art kids L.A. is turning out these days; it seems like the youth are almost over irony and the focus is on a more positive and earnest practice.

7065 Lexington Ave., L.A. | www.circus-gallery.com | (323) 962-8506 | Through June 9

Michael G. Bauer, Untitled (2007)Mary Weatherford’s “Paintings of a Cave” at Sister Gallery

L.A. painter Mary Weatherford offers paintings as ruminations on a Northern California cave. Clearly using her last show, which featured paintings of a particular rock formation, as a point of departure, Weatherford now explores the loaded symbolism of this cave. I must admit that Plato’s allegory gets lost on me again and again, but what I do remember has to do with light and shadow, which are clearly investigated in this body of work. In these oil paintings on linen she explores the prismatic quality of the light and geological formations to create a luminous view into the shadowy unknown, an image loaded with metaphor and rich with religious and philosophical history.

437 Gin Ling Way, L.A. | www.sisterla.com | (213) 628-7000 | Through June 16

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