"Twice Removed: Greg Mocilnikar and Andy Kolar: New Paintings," Walter Maciel Gallery, Culver City

Rare is the chance to see work that, piece by piece, so clearly merits a visual dialogue.

Such is the case here.

Greg Mocilnikar does to space what Juan Gris, with his Synthetic Cubism, does to form. He dissects relationships of interior and external spaces (not to mention relationships of negative and positive space) and then rearranges them to form delicate and ethereal structures buttressed by color, shape, and scale.

Andy Kolar similarly abstracts features, in this case architecture and topographical, into elements of color, shape, and scale, and then aggregates them to form uneasy alliances between organic and hard-edged, spontaneous and calculated, with everything either on the verge of once again rearranging itself or finally settling into place.

Mocilnikar's work shimmers, as if crystallizing even momentarily from some prior existence while Kolar's celebrates a temporary truce between entropy and order.

To see them side by side is to appreciate the struggle to translate space and the things contained therein onto a two-dimensional surface. Having endured the process of abstraction and reformulation, the traces of which are apparent on each surface, the work seems to say, to each other as well as to the viewer, "Finally!"

The exhibition runs until March 30. Gallery hours are 11am - 6pm, Tuesday through Saturday. The gallery is located at 2642 S. La Cienaga Boulevard, Los Angeles. For more information call (310) 839-1840 or visit www.waltermacielgallery.com.