Two painters posit banal architectural environments as metaphoric expressions of thoughts and emotions at George Billis Gallery. Each of the eight oil paintings comprising Alex Roulette‘s show, “Memory Moving Sideways,” features one or more people dwarfed by uninspiring suburban environs of concrete, dirt, grass and water. These contemplative easel-sized scenes initially appear mundane, but bizarre mysteries emerge upon closer investigation. Impressions of normalcy succumb to striking incongruities, such as incurious bathers wading towards a shallowly submerged sedan in Under the Surface (all works 2018). Engulfed in stultifying milieus of tightly controlled nature, Roulette’s tiny protagonists consistently appear lonely and ineffectual. Pointedly symbolizing disunity and isolation, Divides shows a tiptoed man peering over a wall, trying vainly to catch a glimpse of the ocean beyond. Desolation also pervades Eric Hesse‘s encaustic cityscapes. Contemporary encaustic is typically associated with mixed-media collages and/or abstractions; but pigment suspended in molten beeswax can render a spectrum of atmospheric color, light, matter and air. From brick walls jutting with scabrous maroon impasto to azure skies luminous with translucent waxen layers, Hesse’s show, “Almost Not There,” tenders a rare skilful display of the ancient medium’s wide-ranging representational potential. Beleaguered industrial structures and other mundane trappings of urban life serve as foundations for Hesse’s transcendent geometric compositions such as An Emptiness I Needed to Know (pictured above), where the whitish side of a nondescript edifice blends into sky divided by tenuous wire. Both painters portray nature and factitiousness as inextricably linked.

George Billis Gallery LA
2716 S. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
Shows run through Nov. 24