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Ivan Morley at FrehrkingWeisehofer - CologneChris Kraus

Ivan Morley's complex, color-saturated

paintings are visual extrapolationsmade within an associative game thatstarts with history. Born in Burbank,Calif. in the mid-1960s--seemingly atime and place of little history--Morleybegins his work by excavating obscureanecdotes from Los Angeles's mid-19th-century frontier past. By paintingexploratively on a variety of surfaces,including textured glass, wood panels,batik and dyed canvas, Morleyexpands the scope of his investigationbeyond the literalness of recorded factinto a swirling, hallucinatory mass.

"Lab 2001 ," the group of sevenpaintings in this exhibition, recreatesan explosion that took place in the1850s at a site identified on a wallpanel as "Bill's Asphaltum-CampheneLab." Bill, we learn, had luckilystepped out for a drink when theaccident occurred. In depicting sevenphases of the explosion, the paintingsfunction like animation cels. They

stand alone, but can also beexperienced as a lightning-quickmontage of jumpcuts. Through thisapproach, Morley avoids thedichotomy between abstract andfigurative painting.

In Lab (oil, soap and KY jelly on panel),a clapboard shack on a bed of yellow,red and orange flames floats over acyclorama backdrop. The explosionhits in many-pointed stars, andpixilated colored glass fills the cabin'swindows. Visually akin to amateurcommercial signage--especially thehand-painted sheep and cows thatadorn carniceria storefronts in L.A.'sHispanic neighborhoods--this paintingfunctions as the master shot of theseries.

In a second Lab (oil on glass), Morleymoves in for a close-up. With coloraccenting the existing pattern of thetranslucent textured "privacy glass"

it's made on, the painting looks like a

gorgeous sea-anemone whose fiery,amorphous heart pulses within a bedof muted blues and earth-tones. In athird Lab (oil and dye on glass), theanemone explodes into a pixilated

color field, which Morley achieves byselectively enhancing some texturedpatterns in the glass and obscuringother portions. The craft deployed isreminiscent of meticulously rendered19th-century Bavarian glass folkicons. Another painting playfullyabstracts the series' elements viaembroidered chunks of clapboard andcolored dots floating against a dyedgreen field.

Intellectually adventurous and visuallypleasurable, "Lab 2001" dances withthe elusiveness of "fact." History,here, serves as a catalyst, but the realstory is the way that any truthful lookat reality must result in the explosionof "fact" into unsynthesizablecategories.