Ruprecht Von Kaufmann

Ruprecht von Kaufmann's paintings are unnerving. They thrust viewers into face-to-face confrontations with the vulnerable, naked and trapped, the compromised and the morally ambiguous. Daunting as well is Von Kaufmann's technical facility. He paints physical and psychological aspects of the human figure with uncanny persuasiveness. At 28, Von Kaufmann has already had a handful of well-received solo exhibitions in San Diego, Chicago and Los Angeles.

The photographs on view in Reagan Louie's current exhibition at Gallery Luisotti represent a six-year documentary journey through the underworld of the Asian sex industry. A Chinese American photographer whose last series (10 years in the making) was an epic exploration of his ancestral homeland, Louie covered nearly a dozen countries for this project, encountering hundreds of women and girls in nearly every conceivable level of the trade. (Men appear only occasionally, primarily as clients.

The photographs on view in Reagan Louie's current exhibition at Gallery Luisotti represent a six-year documentary journey through the underworld of the Asian sex industry. A Chinese American photographer whose last series (10 years in the making) was an epic exploration of his ancestral homeland, Louie covered nearly a dozen countries for this project, encountering hundreds of women and girls in nearly every conceivable level of the trade. (Men appear only occasionally, primarily as clients.

Ruprecht von Kaufmann's paintings are unnerving. They thrust viewers into face-to-face confrontations with the vulnerable, naked and trapped, the compromised and the morally ambiguous. Daunting as well is Von Kaufmann's technical facility. He paints physical and psychological aspects of the human figure with uncanny persuasiveness. At 28, Von Kaufmann has already had a handful of well-received solo exhibitions in San Diego, Chicago and Los Angeles.

F. Scott Hess describes his stunning cycle of paintings on view at the Orange County Museum of Art as "prayers for atheists." They are religious paintings, he says, "bereft of God but searching for the core of what it means to be human." Each of the 24 paintings could spin a novel of great complexity, so dense are they with implication, compelling detail, dangling discontinuities and dynamics between characters that beg a narrative framework.