LA CIENEGA AREA

Jedd Garet is one of those hot new artists of a few years ago whose work originally seemed interesting but hasn’t worn well. Among young artists who have reworked Italian Mannerism in search of something relevant and new, he has been identified with emblematic images of twisted, elongated figures, set in ominous, theatrical spaces.

His current show of about a dozen recent acrylic paintings presents some new images and puzzling juxtapositions along with familiar human silhouettes. As usual, all are clumsily painted in aggressive, deliberately off-putting colors. In the most painterly of his new works, Garet sways toward Romanticism, trotting out cliches of nature as a portentous force. We find, for example, a purple seascape, a red landscape, a vase-like form being sucked into a swirling mass and a funneling thrust of red feeding into a loopy enclosure. In a beveled canvas called “She,” a figurative silhouette (divided into light and dark halves) overlays and vertically bisects a seascape.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with reworking art history, but Garet squeezes out all the juice in paintings that are not only dry but stone cold. Both his subject matter and crude approach suggest that he’s making a point about the futility of searching for beauty and truth, but it comes off as an oppressive statement of regret. (Michael Kohn Gallery, 313 N. Robertson Blvd., to April 28.)