LA CIENEGA AREA

Jin Soo Kim describes her figurative abstractions as an attempt to “feel and understand the ‘thread of life’ that weaves through all things, both animate and inanimate.” That’s a tall order, little lady, but we’re all rooting for you. Kim begins her noble quest with charcoal underdrawing that lends her work a smoky, chiaroscuro effect; those charcoal lines also serve to organize a surface layer of paint that tends to be highly emotive and a bit amorphous. Employing a sugared palette reminiscent of Watteau, Kim conjures a swirling realm where human limbs, animals and blurry faces occasionally peek through the ether. They’re very soft paintings.

Kim is better known for her sculptural works, a few of which are also on view. A series titled “Chair I--IV” is composed of four simple chairs that look as though they’ve been twisted into a contorted shape, then coated with a brown substance resembling papier-mache or adobe. Juxtaposing these earthbound objects with her celestial paintings makes for a show one might describe as “The Sky Above, the Mud Below.”

In an adjoining gallery are seven portraits by Keisho Okayama. Working with acrylic on unstretched canvas, Okayama reduces the human face to its basic geometry and paints with a primitive touch that invests his pictures with a pagan spirituality. (Simard Halm & Shee Gallery, 665 N. La Cienega Blvd., to Jan. 3.)