WILSHIRE CENTER

Joe Amrhein’s juxtapositions of freeway traffic and carnival rides might not make as much sense outside Los Angeles. But his overlapping multi-canvas paintings with carnival themes are clearly the work of an artist with an almost musical feel for life’s odd moments and dislocations.

In “Carnival,” a medley of four paintings angled and slung together hints at slices of a view: a drive belt slipping over nodes of light, the elegant pattern of Ferris wheel “spokes”; silhouetted riders illuminated bizarrely from below; the hot colors of flashing lights; palm trees, an empty billboard frame and the vacant white gleams of street lamps.

Amrhein works in ceramics, too. In “Showtime,” a stiff, pained-looking figure sitting on a tall stool has something of the freshness of the artist’s paintings. Other pieces are more about craft than imagination. “Step Right Up,” a medley of stools, targets and milk bottles, offers only a stale whiff of Joe Goode and Jasper Johns. (Turske & Whitney Gallery, 962 N. La Brea Ave., to Aug. 29.)