Review: Alexander Couwenberg at William Turner Gallery

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The paintings in Alexander Couwenberg’s “A Little Bit Left of All Right” at William Turner Gallery are as blithely appealing as the show’s title would imply and a pleasure to encounter at a glance. But after a while, their tricks, along with their relative limitations, reveal themselves.

Couwenberg has a pronounced fondness for Midcentury Modernism — so pronounced, it seems to have shouldered out any competing inspiration. With a bachelor-pad palette and a few quintessential hard-edged motifs (the pinstripe, the lozenge, the inflated rectangle, triangle or trapezium), he concocts sleek, multilayered, spatially sophisticated compositions, ranging from 2 feet to 8 feet across, that by their nature cover only a narrowly circumscribed territory.

Whether he needs to reach beyond this is arguable; there is much to be said for a handsome, well-crafted picture. It is just these qualities, however, that make one curious about what more he might accomplish outside the bounds of his extreme nostalgia. As it is, he’s playing it all too safe.

-- Holly Myers

William Turner Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., E-1, Santa Monica, (310) 453-0909, through Feb. 21. Closed Sundays and Mondays.