Review: Sam Falls’ large ‘paintings’ ultimately carry little weight

Sam Falls’ new works at Hannah Hoffman are more interesting for the ideas that hover around them and the process that generated them than the images within them.

In his artist statement, which doubles as a press release, Falls calls the pieces “paintings,” using quotes to call into question their status as such, while exploiting their superficial resemblance to photograms. Ultimately, the works are glorified stencils.

To make them, Falls gathers foliage from his backyard in Venice (palm fronds, birds of paradise), his childhood house in Vermont (ferns) and the woods around his other home in upstate New York (maple and ash trees).

He places the branches or stems on raw canvas, scatters dry pigment (cyan, yellow, magenta) over all and leaves the ensembles out in the rain, face up. Colors bleed or concentrate around the negative silhouettes left by the plants.

Falls’ works trade on the innate power of physical traces, images physically linked to their referents, but it’s not enough to carry the large (up to 13 feet on a side) canvases or to compensate for how little they deliver after an initial glance.

Notions of chance and agency play into the mix -- Falls chooses colors at random, he says, unpredictable rain is largely in charge, and sometimes animals stray across the surface, leaving tracks -- but again, the how and the why overshadow the what.

Hannah Hoffman Gallery, 1010 N. Highland Ave., (323) 450-9106, through Oct. 25. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.hannahhoffmangallery.com