When Frames Are Center of Attention

Some paintings need frames and others look better without. Whenever this question dominates, you know that what you’re looking at has failed to rise above its surroundings.

At Miller Fine Art, Anders Lansing’s abstract paintings play out this problem with more earnestness than befits their otherwise subtle surfaces. Three of the artist’s six paintings have such elaborate settings that it’s difficult to see what’s inside.

To make his ambitious frames, the artist cut two rectangular sections from two of the gallery’s walls and installed a pair of life-size rooms no bigger than phone booths. One, complete with checkerboard linoleum tiles, drop-ceiling and recessed light, resembles a generic rec room; the other , bedecked with burgundy upholstery and small openings in its side walls, recalls an old-fashioned confessional.

Both cramped spaces frame small abstract paintings that have been set in similarly cut-out rectangles in each of their back walls. To see the third canvas you nearly have to kneel down and peer into the gap that would facilitate communication between priests and penitents, if this were a real confessional.

Lansing’s three other paintings benefit from their conventional hanging. Framed by the gallery’s white walls and bathed in its natural light, they give viewers fewer directions about how they’re meant to be read. As a result, you’re left with more room to maneuver through their subtly modulated expanses of smooth, creamy colors. In this case, less is more.

BE THERE

Miller Fine Art, 8720 1/2 W. Pico Blvd., (310) 652-0057, through Jan. 11. Closed Sunday through Tuesday.