By Katya Kazakina for Bloomberg News (Excerpt)

March 16 (Bloomberg) -- Mehr (Midtown) gallery owes its parenthetical name to the old Midtown Chelsea garage on the ground floor of the building it occupies on West 18th Street.

The tiny new exhibition space is easy to miss unless you know it's there; the block between Ninth and 10th avenues is filled mostly with apartment buildings and new construction. Twice I tried to find it and failed. (Full disclosure: I didn't bring the exact address and was looking for a gallery sign, which doesn't yet exist.)

The gallery is run by Lital Mehr, who tiptoed around in super-high heels and super-skinny jeans. It has a show on by Berlin-based painter Jorg Scheibe.

The exhibition, the artist's New York debut, exemplifies the gallery's strategy: Build a niche by giving promising foreign artists their first Chelsea shows.

Scheibe's six oils on canvas depict abstract ``landscapes'' and still lifes. Each features a digitally derived central form on a flat background. The shapes are liquid, curvilinear and futuristic (late Rosenquist and Zaha Hadid come to mind). Color combinations are occasionally unexpected: Cold pastel blue is paired with hot pink and set against earthy green speckled with white triangles.

Prices are also unexpected. The paintings, which range in width from 3.3 feet to 6.6 feet, are between $4,000 and $7,000, a bargain by Chelsea standards. The show is on view through April 7 at 436 W. 18th St., second floor; +1-212-255-0009; http://mehrgallery.com.