Recent paintings by Duayne Zaloudek, who lives in Portland, Oregon, are on display at Comara Gallery. Zaloudek’s limited imagery is so precious that only a superbly refined treatment of the forms could sustain the works serially. As it is, they become tedious. The primary image is a bilaterally symmetric circular form, like half of an apple (Emerson Woelffer uses it repeatedly), with a stem-like appendage. This shape is surrounded variously by balloon-like forms and jagged edges organized on a horizon-field basis.

The original bilateral form, as Zaloudek conceived it in his earlier, simpler works (shown at Comara last year) holds up very well in some instances. The introduction of peripheral detail destroys its immanent appeal. One sees vaguely that the artist is striving to attain effects of masses floating in space, or of subtle diametric tensions to create movement, but the endeavor does not elicit absorbing interest. The acrylic color is strangely irrelevant to the respective auras of the works. Milarepa IV is in reds and oranges; Milarepa XV is brown, black, dull green and white. Milarepa X, which is beige and white, using an area of naked canvas as a positive form, does better at holding one’s attention than most.

The titles of the works are taken from the name of a 17th-century Tibetan monk, and have no discernible relation to the paintings. Their overall sense, however, is consistent with the arbitrariness of the nomenclature.

—Jane Livingston