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While Eric Fischl’s traveling exhibition continues at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (through May 11), six recent paintings have arrived in Los Angeles. They are so large

that they are divided between two galleries; three at Gagosian, three nearby at Weinberg. We aren’t the first to see these massive works--they were recently exhibited at a New York

gallery--but they are so compelling that it’s hard to feel persecuted for living on the wrong side of the country. Anyone who gives these paintings only the standard seven seconds of viewing

time deserves to go home and watch television. Of the most heavily publicized _ enfants terribles _ of Neo-Expressionism, Fischl stands alone as a traditional figure painter capable of

moving his audience emotionally. Now 38, he’s no beginner, and his exhibited work resonates with authentic feeling, set forth with a mature grasp of painting. Combining two or more canvases

in each work--usually overlapped and often at angles--he pieces together disturbing bedroom or beach scenes fraught with tension or embarrassment. People may seem out of place, as in “Pretty

Ladies,” in which a nude black woman lies on a satiny white bed in a dark room, her eyes trained on a small TV set. Or one subject may confront another as life goes on in another part of

the picture. A muscular young woman, flexed for action, has a catlike fix on a placid man in an orange-and-green beach picture called “Titanville” while nude bathers cavort in the

background. A vivacious woman talking to a languid sunbather is oblivious to a masturbating boy (or midget?) in a particularly strong painting called “Costa del Sol.” A generation gap (and

possibly a familial one) widens to an abyss in “Bayonne,” a haunting painting depicting a young ballerina dancing with her palms flat out, as if to fend off an older nude woman. When Fischl

moves into carnival pageantry, as in “Manhattoes” (the largest work at Weinberg), he loses touch with the emotional charge that’s so effective in other works and seems to be indulging in

complexity for its own sake. But even then, it’s impossible to ignore the sight of a woman carrying a severed head, the pair of masked jesters on stilts and the whirling Latino women. This

is a seething painting, but its heat isn’t concentrated enough to have the impact of the less ambitious pieces. He also fizzles out in “Fort Worth” (the 18-foot-wide centerpiece at

Gagosian). Here a blond woman in a yellow leotard and a man in bikini briefs don’t so much confront each other as announce vague discomfort. They stand silently in a hillside urban living

room also occupied by a camera on a tripod and a convoluted marble sculpture. Yet even when Fischl’s work is flawed, it dredges up unsettling feelings that expose the flayed heart of human

experience. When he’s at his peak, as in “Pretty Ladies” and “Costa del Sol,” he’s unforgettable. (Larry Gagosian Gallery, 510 N. Robertson Blvd., to April 29; Daniel Weinberg Gallery, 619

Almont Drive, to May 3.) MORE TO READ