The look of these large oil paintings might be described in terms of dueling influences—19th-century landscape painting invaded by intermittent attempts at de Chiricoesque surrealism. Suzanne Caporael was at her best in this exhibition when she let the landscape painter in her have the upper hand, producing murky unpopulated seas and skies—emblems of turmoil—and allowing the works’ evocative treatment of nature to be the main thrust, rather than simply using it as background for some self-consciously enigmatic tableau. An example of this latter tendency included Artaud and Dr. Dardel, 1988, a

Nancy Dwyer’s recent work—here represented by six sculptures and three paintings—is about the mechanics of public and personal communication, the density and mystery of common words. The works call to mind the way the world speaks to people through advertisements. Dwyer uses the strategy an ad man might employ if it were contemplation his clients were after instead of giggles, seduction, and submission. This exhibition engaged viewers and posed troubling, indirect questions: How about your life? What’s your problem?

Love Life (all works, 1988) is a very large gray painting with gold 3-D-looking

Until the expected completion of its Frank Gehry-designed exhibition space in May 1989, the newly constituted Santa Monica Museum of Art has been exploiting the unfinished site (a former egg-processing plant) through a series of site-specific installations entitled “Previews: Art in the Raw.” Although the concept is hardly new, it clearly illustrates the current art institution’s sensitivity to post-Conceptual challenge, inviting artists to critique its mythifying role, all the better to circumscribe the resistance from within. The debut show—David Bunn’s ingenious Sphere of Influence—attempted