Yishai Jusidman at Yvon Lambert

"The World This Week" section of the Economist magazine contains encapsulated stories of events accompanied by thumbnail pictures. Yishai Jusidman took images from that source for this midcareer show, titled "The Economist Shuffle." Born in Mexico and now working in Los Angeles, Jusidman has over the years tried various ways to give traditional painting more edge by wedding it to other objects in the context of an installation. Here he simply presented paintings--oil and egg tempera on wood, each 28 1/2 by 30 1/2 inches--with identical gilded frames. They were widely spaced on the walls, giving a sense of unhurried contemplation.

The 16 pictures (all 2006) were identified by number. In The Economist Shuffle #1, a military chopper is down in a barren, dung-colored desert landscape. Heavy smoke rises from the wreckage into a pale blue sky. A second chopper hovers close by. The Economist Shuffle #2: Four helmeted firefighters in orange jumpsuits and goggles jog through a thick wall of smoke that obscures everything but the pavement beneath them, with its yellow and white traffic lines. Each of them carries a firefighting tool. The Economist Shuffle #4: A slender Arab, naked except for his white boxers, doubles over in exhaustion. A stocky, clean-cut American soldier in fatigues sits on a plastic patio chair watching him. The Economist Shuffle #5: The midriff of an overweight male is seen in profile. His belly, trapped in a checkered shirt, flops over his belt down onto his blue jeans. The Economist Shuffle #10: A silhouetted profile of someone exhaling copious clouds of smoke fills the panel. A drink is held close to the lips and a burning cigarette between the fingers, with a stem of ash listing to one side. The Economist Shuffle #11: Poised like an Olympian javelin thrower, a street rioter in a hooded sweatshirt is about to hurl a flaming Molotov cocktail at some unseen target.

To those of us following current events, the pictures are so familiar that we could supply the captions ourselves. The images are part of our lives, part of our daily dialogue, and presenting them directly as the artist does, without artifice, makes them carry the weight of real events. The works retain the cool objectivity and cropping of the camera, yet they evoke the soft, low-key mood of Morandi. Jusidman clearly revels in the timeless sensuality of color, paint and surface--the very things that separate the images of an intense 24/7 news cycle from the contemplative realm of art.

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