ALEXANDER ROSS | LOS ANGELES TIMES

Alexander Ross’ big pictures of little blobs of carefully worked Plasticine make a terrific first impression. The colors pop. The surfaces luxuriate with the rich sensuality of exquisitely mixed oil on canvas. And the forms fascinate, creating endless opportunities for the imagination to romp around the padded playground of soft-core Surrealism while the mind nods at the brainy ideas and big-ticket painters Ross’ art invokes.

Considerable fun is to be had if you enjoy finding images in clouds. The four untitled paintings at Daniel Weinberg Gallery are super-realistic depictions of Martian green meteorites floating before baby blue backdrops, which resemble tidied up versions of the squiggles in yesteryear’s psychedelia. Lipstick red barnacles, meandering tendrils, numerous protuberances, more numerous craters and all manner of orifices cover the surfaces of Ross’ Play-Doh-like blobs. The seven drawings explore compositional details.

A second look, however, leads to second thoughts. One of the problems with Ross’ paintings is that they are overachievers. Both abstract and representational, they are based in sculpture and photography. They are organic and artificial, at once portraits and landscapes, microscopic and cosmic, benign and malignant. Every detail makes sense. There is no room for accidents or for happenstance, much less for chaos or confusion.

There is room for fun and there is room for seriousness. But the two experiences do not mingle. Neither informs the other nor fuels its fires. Instead, the physical pleasure of looking and the cerebral pleasure of knowing are segregated. What should be sexy comes off as cute. Think Terry Winters by way of Carroll Dunham by way of Jonathan Lasker. It’s a stifling pedigree, despite all the hard work.

Daniel Weinberg Gallery, 6148 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., (323) 954-8425, through March 25. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

— David Pagel