Mallory Lake: Italy Light and Shadow

Insipid, tepid and vigorously lacking in originality, the Pucker Gallery's current exhibit of pastels by Mallory Lake, Italy Light and Shadow, is a fuzzy romantic nightmare, Hallmark style. These lifeless, flat and relentlessly maudlin landscapes do the impossible: resurrect the bourgeois landscape of the 19th century without even the slightest hint of irony. Such unremitting cuteness might just as well have been the result of Snuggles the detergent teddy bear's experimentation with a paint-by-numbers kit while on vacation in Tuscany. To Lake's credit, several of her horizontal compositions are unusually strong in their geometric structure and most of her works accomplish their goal of illusionistic pleasantry. Nonetheless, an obvious insensitivity to nuance, subtlety and modulation suggests that most of these pieces may have been drawn from photographs, a point which would undo Lake's romantic pretensions. Moreover, Lake's predictable shapes, inconsistent light sources and over-all muddy palette undermine her attempt at credible luminosity and whimsy. Her consistently equivocal and feathery mishandling of her medium (which the catalog terms "atmospheric") is enough to make you want to pay Lake's T-fare to the Gardner to see one of the Rembrandts. With such banal fare, the Pucker Gallery would do well to set up a booth at the Oktoberfest bazaar next season in place of a gallery exhibition.

Mallory Lake's pastels are on display at the Pucker Gallery, 171 Newbury St., Boston, through Nov. 8. For more information, call 267-9473.