A small exhibition of five recent works by Mimmo Paladino proved to be one of the highlights of “II Modo Italiano,” the multivenued 11-artist survey of recent Italian art organized by the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art. Water of the Pond, a large, heavily textured, blond and yellow painting from 1980, reveals something of the reticence and beauty of Paladino’s earlier abstract style; this painting, however, derives from a time when his aspirations to scale had begun to overstress and force the subtle runs of color and areas of low relief that work so well in a more modest format. With