WEST LOS ANGELES

A show of John Franklin Koenig’s collages and paintings introduces an artist who has moved to Seattle after a lengthy stint in Europe. He’s a deft designer who keeps us briefly entertained with a changing repertoire of materials, textures and other surface effects but fails to enlist prolonged interest.

Koenig has been influenced by Oriental art and Abstract Expressionism and his current artwork perpetuates those interests. Calligraphic brush strokes, suggestive open spaces and floating vignettes of texture and pattern allude to landscape, both cosmic and earthbound.

The best of his works aspire to a mystical state but rarely achieve it because they seem more arbitrary than inspired. The most disappointing are collages that make decorative and rather silly use of repetitive, peekaboo faces tucked away in swirls of torn paper, gauzy fabric and splashy pigment. (Shoshona Wayne Gallery, 9151 Exposition Drive, to June 13.)