Opening Today: New Paintings
By Danny Heller

In his first show, Los Angeles painter Danny Heller’s focus was suburbia. This new exhibition at Terrence Rogers Fine Art features the houses that California developer Joseph Eichler built in the San Fernando Valley.

Between 1950 and 1974, Eichler teamed up with some of the era’s most noted architects to produce houses that sported wide expanses of glass, beamed ceilings, courtyards and atriums.

Architecturally adventurous, the houses captured the aspirations of Californians to live in new ways and helped define the modern movement.

Heller paints “now” – the houses as they are today and the aura of wonderment and delight that was and is unique to the houses and the mid-century modernity they represented.

Rather than doing portraits of the houses, Heller painted details — a door, a façade’s strict geometry of right angles, the wonderful triangles of a carport., a light-filled atrium. In Heller’s eyes, a light in a garage or a glimpse of forms seen through translucent glass become as magical as dusk behind Italian cypresses.

Heller’s paintings hint at the complexity of the lives that are lived in the nidst of the symmetry, poise and beauty that were hallmarks of the era, Southern California and Eichler’s houses.

Opening Reception, Sunday, June 22, 1 to 4 p.m. Artist talk at 2 p.m.

The gallery, at 1231 Fifth Street, is open Wednesday through Saturday, noon to five. p.m. 310 394 4999.www.TROGART.com