Edition: U.S. / Global


Published: November 29, 2002

Earl McGrath Gallery

20 West 57th Street, Manhattan

Through Dec. 20

It's a big art world out there, bigger than any single individual can grasp, and its borders are getting fuzzier all the time. For corroboration, visit Josh Agle's first New York gallery exhibition and consider his kitschy but suave paintings of 50's-ish interiors. They might be illustrations for a book of cocktail recipes, if their colors didn't burn holes in the wall.

Mr. Agle, also known as Shag (the last letters of his given name plus the first letters of his surname), is 40 and lives in Los Angeles, where he has an ardent following. Claiming inspiration from Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf, he sometimes designs editioned handbags, bar stools and the occasional skateboard.

In painting he favors gentle, ambiguous satires of jaded urbanites who share Case Study Houses or New York duplexes with knowing household pets, hanging lamps and sofas with legs. There are repeated art and design audibles -- a famous Lipchitz sculpture in ''Sophisticated Misfits,'' maybe a Harry Bertoia in ''Tropic of Cancer,'' and flat Marimekko leaves all over the place. ''The World's Most Collected Artist'' presents the history of painting as sidewalk art. ''Luncheon in the Grass'' recasts Manet's picnic in Central Park, with satyrs.

But while wit is nifty, color is catchier. Ultimately, the eye is snared by Mr. Agle's economic use of saturated colors -- sharp greens and warm lavenders, smoldering reds, sour ochers -- and the tinted-gel space created by his thin-on-thin paint handling. The New Yorker may reach out to Mr. Agle, but Josef Albers could easily have claimed these pulsating furnaces of color as guilty pleasures. ROBERTA SMITH