Stuart Lehrman’s work is provocative in its flamboyant hedonism. His wood sculptures are not only polychrome but multifaceted, and each razor-edged plane is handled with such fetishistic finesse that material sleekness could be construed as emotional slickness. In a period dominated by expressions of “down” moods in “dirty” painterliness, Lehrman’s work suggests the upbeat vivacity of an obsessive Mr. Clean. The sheer delectability of the textural effects—both visual and tactile—can appear deceptively as infatuation with the purely visual. In fact, the sculptures’ rich sensuality easily polarizes

For the past decade or so, Harry Fritzius’ paintings and collages have been a well-kept Bay Area secret, more talked and written about than seen. He had his first show last April, a little retrospective at the Nelson Gallery of the University of California, Davis. His pictures are deep and dark and dexterous. They have a lot of nerve. A motto for them could be drawn from the W. H. Auden poem that begins, “About suffering they were never wrong/The old masters,” except that for Fritzius the “human position” is lugubrious and less succinct than the one in Auden’s poem. He does old master quotations,