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Slideshow: ''A Day in Pompeii'' exhibit at the Museum of Science

Museum And Gallery

Hanging in the balance

"CRAZY HORSE" Oil on canvas, 36 x 54 inches, by Andre LaPorte.

LaPorte shares a tandem exploration of horses and the geometric relations of architecture for the show, titled "Equus in the Grange." "Crazy Horse" involves a reductive approach to create a dramatic study in movement. Silhouettes of horses bend and curve, interacting with one another in a vague dreamlike color-field. The artist creates these loose forms by building a thick layer of white over a complex underpainting filled with dark dripping colors. One last layer of gold creates highlights in the musculature, solidifying the creatures' shimmering insubstantiality. Form is implied with graceful economy, most notably in the dancing legs and curving necks of the horses. In "Grazing," the spindly legs echo the drips of the underpainting.

A variation on this approach feels less effective when LaPorte chooses to create the horses through an additive application of the paint, as with "Horse #4" and "Horse #105." We lose the artist's ingenious formal play of compositional ground, and the silhouette device begins to feel more like design or iconography. In the context of the show, these pieces are welcome evidence of a transparent sharing of artistic twists and turns. The drawbacks and successes of "Equus in the Grange" are rooted in the same exploratory soil.

The range of stylistic variation is even more evident in the architectural works. "Grange #38" and "City #205" feature an overlay of vibrant oil pastel in a free gesture reminiscent of '80s graphic design or the quick coloring-in of a fashion-industry sketch. Meanwhile, the palette and thin line renderings of "City #210" jump back a few more decades to feel positively Art Deco. "#210" is an example of LaPorte as compositional master. Each element either hangs off the canvas with its own weight or is delicately balanced on another form. Every line is not quite straight and each arch not quite centered, but taken together, the piece sings.

Imperfect harmony is also evident in "Grange #38" where the loosely peppered barn-like forms inhabit a rich black ground. Earthen tones are hewn into the canvas while sandblasted turquoise highlights form topographical islands within the bounds of the buildings. Though the sander and brush are applied intentionally, the results require a creative tolerance for random occurrence on the part of the artist and reward the viewer's eyes by way of a depth of texture.