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By Dan Leone

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THE DOUBLE NEGATIVE in the title makes a lot more sense after you see Roslyn Abraham's paintings. They're hardly paintings, really, more like piles of paint plus various other materials, like rice, lentils, or marbles, built up on the canvas. Every piece seems to beg you to touch it – to run your fingers over its lumps, to lick the sugary crystals stuck to its surface, or to pick at the shiny, murky, glittery, glossy, viscous sludge Abraham has turned into works of art on the wall. They are completely abstract, and yet they all seem to have personalities, like the oatmeal turned breakfast monster from the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, reaching out a gloppy hand to grab you while Mom isn't looking. Abraham doesn't use frames, and her colors are simple and straightforward; it's the textures that make her works so complex and engaging. Abraham shares the exhibition space with Lydia Van Nostrand. They met as students at the California College of Arts and Crafts, where they both majored in jewelry and metal arts. Abraham has since given up metalwork for painting, but the two artists still have in common an intense preoccupation with surfaces. Van Nostrand's metal sculptures are inspired by plant life. Some are incredibly realistic, while others are fanciful and surreal. The most interesting works in the show belong to the latter group. Van Nostrand's metallic flights of vegetative fancy include the Protectress, with its weird spikes and seeds, and the graceful bronze pods and tendrils of Vessel II and Vessel III. These "Frankenstein-ed" plant creatures are both menacing and beautiful; like the oatmeal monster (or Frankenstein, for that matter) they seem as if they might come alive at any moment, with minds and desires of their own. Thurs., 4-8 p.m.; Fri.-Sun., 1-6 p.m., 449B 23rd St., Oakl. (510) 444-7263. (Lindsey Westbrook)