Lisa Dent Gallery has a three person show of paintings and drawings by Adam Longatti, Nadol Pak and Ryan Pierce. Two are recent graduates of local art schools and the third, Longatti, finished his education in ‘02 from Cal State Fresno.

Longatti’s handsome, smallish paintings depict California Central Valley agricultural scenes in transition with commercial and residential development intruding upon the bucolic scenes. Pak’s crisp drawings look like molecular abstractions at first but closer inspection reveals images of devastated land seen from the air. Pierce’s big, juicy paintings narrate Lord of the Flies-like stories of post-apocalyptic scenes and societies. As a whole, the show has a nice range of visual styles and hangs together loosely around the issue of landscape and trauma.

Ryan Pierce, Shooting at Satellites, 2007. Acrylic on panel, 3’ x 7’

After visiting Lisa’s gallery, I stopped by Haines Gallery to see the recent work by David Simpson. Simpson’s work is a continuation of his exploration of iridescent paints. The paintings’ reflectivity takes on the changing light conditions of the gallery and turns the gallery into an installation environment that implicates the physical and atmospheric space outside the boundaries of the picture plane. I consider Simpson to be the most under-recognized great painter in America and this work did not change my opinion of him one bit.

David Simpson, Light Wells (detail), 1991. Acrylic on canvas

It may be unfair to compare the three young artists in Lisa Dent’s show to David Simpson who has added sophistication and refinement to his work for years. Unfair to be sure but in reality, artists (young, old and in between) are unavoidably looked at in context to whatever happens to be in the memory or immediate experience of the viewer. I liked Longatti, Pak and Pierce’s works at first but after seeing Simpson’s mastery, I now feel that the fresh spark of Dent’s emerging artists pales in comparison to seeing what a spark can do to set the whole damn place on fire as Simpson vividly shows.