La Cienega Area

Jerrold Burchman paints still lifes with definite commercial appeal. Colors are trendy, polite pastels. Subjects are enormous vases on tables, stylish drinking glasses that float in the air and stark elegant floral arrangements of the sort we’d be sure to see at the best dinner parties. In one of the more challenging works, shiny flat apples sit on a dark disk and float, along with a small portrait of a Chinese maiden, in a scratchy, gestural space. Burchman’s technique--squeaky clean and just sketchy enough to satisfy a safe and popular notion of “abstract”--will have a certain appeal, but these works bite off less than Burchman is clearly capable of handling. (Simard & Halm Gallery, 665 N. La Cienega, to Dec. 23.)