BEVERLY HILLS

During the 1950s and ‘60s, Matsumi Kanemitsu was living in New York and hanging out with such stalwarts of Abstract Expressionism as Kline, Pollock and De Kooning.

His work at that time, both in color and black and white, reflected that movement’s nervous, all-over expressionism yet tempered it with the more lyrical linearity of Japanese calligraphy. Since his move to Los Angeles in 1965, Kanemitsu has soaked up the light and space aesthetic of Southern California and applied it to the sumi and hake traditions of his roots. The results have been a series of “naturescapes,” in which landscape, natural phenomena such as wind and fire, as well as inner vision, merge in watercolor-like acrylic washes and fluid, gestural impasto.

Unfortunately, Kanemitsu’s mature synthesis of often contradictory styles has robbed his work of its visceral edge and formal experimentation. His blend of psychological and mystical phenomena--through heavy-handed elemental and painterly metaphors--has become an exercise in virtuoso style. Pictorial balance, the dramatic juxtapositions of light and dark, the subtle interplay of planes and forms, have become subsumed by decoration and sentimentality. A potentially powerful and subversive sensuality has become bogged down in the artful and slippery rhetoric of the sublime. (Louis Newman Galleries, 322 N. Beverly Drive, to Feb. 6.)