I’ve had high hopes for the work of Los Angeles artist Peter Lodato since I first saw it a few years back in the 1981 Whitney Biennial. I remember a number of people remarking on the elegant two-paneled wall piece he showed. It was surprising not only as almost the only work of its kind in that Biennial’s goulash of overworked, undereducated figuration, but because, although cool and severe, it looked like the start of something new, rather than a holdover from Minimalism.

Lodato’s small show at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art clarified somewhat the priorities of his art for me, but it