Self-consciously easel paintings, even still-lifes of a sort (with the consistency of his trademark iris), Billy Al Bengston’s work is full of art historical references—to Futurism, Cubism, Art Deco, Expressionism and, in both palette and esthetic, Matisse.

But while Matisse, obviously, uses the colors and elegance of the Riviera as a catalyst to transcendent work, Bengston seems trapped in expressing a camp myth of Southern California. It should also be said, and immediately, that his work is delightful, light-hearted and beautiful to contemplate. The problem is that so often it’s not only

The two series which make up the body of Jean St. Pierre’s third one-man show are both concerned with movement between poles: of chaos and order, the luxurious and the austere, the “natural” and the “artificial.”

“Creation” is a series of six Rimbaud-inspired mixed media works on paper, most mounted on untreated plyboard in shallow, plexiglass boxes which let the viewer realize the presence of layers of mysterious hidden content—painting upon painting—beneath the surface or hidden by paper flaps.

The series gains in interest as it progresses. In the fourth, a still uncertain geometry blooms as a

Jay Willis is concerned with form and, in the most literal sense, with illusion. His sculptural work relies on the sheet of glass—either mounted upright on a tabletop or clamped to a stand—and an arsenal of “props” (lighted and unlighted plumbers’ candles, mirrors, multicolored rope, crayons, paint, arrows, etc.), which he uses not only to form three-dimensional compositions but, magicianlike, to trick or surprise the eye. These props are placed before, behind, through or on the glass; in some cases, the illusion is merely of the objects suspended in space, while in others quite sophisticated