Focusing on life's ragged edges

Line-work, or drawing, gives the exhibition its kick. Titled "Love Street," its centerpiece is a 15- by 30-foot spread of 18 squares of synthetic pink velvet. Laid out on the main gallery's floor, they resemble an unstitched quilt or a slew of makeshift sleeping mats in an overcrowded disaster relief center -- a shelter from the opposite end of the social spectrum from those in trendy magazines.

Apfelbaum used plastic ketchup bottles filled with black fabric dye to squirt dozens of roughly parallel lines in piecemeal patterns on each 5-foot-square section. Sometimes the lines run in the same direction as the fabric's edges -- covering quarters, thirds and halves of each section, as if scribbled by a kid learning her fractions. Other lines march diagonally, forming triangles, diamonds and blurry-edged racing stripes. And some angle every which way, packing their sections like rush-hour subways.

Together, the mix-and-match patterns that collide across the fractured surface of "Pink Floyd" take the shape of a parquet floor cobbled together from scrap wood by a make-do journeyman without an overview and no time to step back and see the contours of her work. Give-it-a-go experimentation never looked better.

Walking around the piece makes its pink fields shift to rose and silvery white and its black lines to grayish silver. This recalls frost forming on snow-less winter lawns and then melting away as the sun rises.

A bigger surprise awaits viewers who look closely. Apfelbaum's lines trace the profiles of crudely drawn snakes, with open mouths and single eyes.

The myriad reptiles do not slither in sensuous curves but are straight and angular, like those carved into rocks 30,000 years ago by our cave-dwelling ancestors. Packed together like sardines in a can, they do not evoke the menace of the biblical serpent but the contemporary dread of invisible contagions and the facelessness of being a statistic.

It's impossible to focus on the snakes, the drawn patterns and the colorful velvet fields simultaneously. Instead, each element plays cat-and-mouse with its counterparts, making for participatory viewing experiences that evoke the subterfuge of Warhol's camouflage paintings and his embrace of masquerade.

Apfelbaum's other works pay more explicit homage to the father of Pop. "Orange Crush" uses his flower forms as springboards for a luscious field of supersaturated color that covers the floor of a second gallery. Two gorgeous pieces, on silk velvet casually push-pinned to the office walls, make sexy bedfellows of Jackson Pollock and Spirograph. And down the street in an auxiliary gallery, a suite of 32 silk-screens titled "Flags of Revolt and Defiance" links art and politics via the passions that fuel the fires of each.

Dark and ebullient, Apfelbaum's double-edged works pack loaded emotions into simple symbols and swiftly drawn lines to capture the complexity of the moment.