S.J. LEE and ERIK SANNER

August 20 – September 6, 2011 at Charles Thomas Contemporary, Culver City
By Bill Lasarow

This two-person show is actually the product of a temporary space taking over the Carmichael Gallery for the summer. Featured are two young artists, S.J. Lee and Erik Sanner who bring classical themes and tendencies to the latest video and digital media. Lee is based in Seattle, Sanner in New York, so formal and aesthetic connections, and they are there, are strictly coincidental.

Erik Sanner, “Moving Landscape,” 2011, still from paint, computer software and video installation.

Sanner is energetically engaged with the frozen in the moment relationship of easel painting to the time-lapse capacity of video. The landscape as a dynamically changing environment that can be conceptually frozen at a given moment has provided many artists a ready metaphor for our own passage through time. Sanner’s work expresses fascination with how unequal rates of growth translate into visual relationships that are attractively unpredictable. The static paintings are roughly equal to the first frame of a film from which an act more of growth than of narrative springs forth. The ghostly appearance of figures, a byproduct of projecting onto his painted image, reduces the human presence in the world to a fleeting and and peripheral matter rather than its central drama.

The traffic cone is a favored symbol of our cultural identity for Sanner, the triangular shape itself a humorous substitute for a compositional arrangement regarded as inherently harmonious and uplifting during several centuries of European painting. Sanner playfully places the object into his landscapes as what comes across as an inscrutable substitute for the observing artist, sets it on a sculpture stand and digitally dresses and undresses it with color, recording, so to speak his own straightforward cone-portrait painting. It all adds up to work that is earnest, good natured, and accessible. He is clearly making every effort to produce an up-to-the-moment body of artwork, but the sensibility that informs it is conservative, and perhaps too modest for its own good.

S.J. Lee, “Two Men Gazing” from “Still Lives” series, 2011, HD video portrait, 31’ 34”.

Less hang loose, S.J. Lee would be regarded as an acolyte of Bill Viola if she were based in Los Angeles. She favors a languorous but very sharp visual experience, and adopts a reverent posture with regard to the historical antecedents whom she embraces, ranging from Goya and Picasso to Fuseli and Sargent.

The fact that some among a series of 30 minute long video portraits feature elderly sitters such as “Sevillano” invests them with striking beauty, even as age and its infirmities are readily visible, only adds to the impression of reverence. She conveys equal interest in children, composing “Waiting to Grow” and others on specific visual quotes, in this case Picasso’s “Child with Dove.” Lee’s version artificially elevates the young subject into a theatrical event that is quite different from Picasso’s expressive embrace. But Lee does build up an emotive component in these works that is a product of the length of time that subjects are asked to pose. What Lee refers to as their “struggle to maintain” actually transforms the up-to-the-minute use of media from the usual trendy appearance to having a feeling of grounded persistence. This is no passing fad.

A conceptually intriguing work that currently exists, in Sol Lewitt fashion, as a written instruction is activated and interacts via cell phone, texting, or email. A set of 26 pencil leads gradually melt down from this interaction, sending out a Morse code message in the process; the 26 pencil leads presumably correspond to the 26 letters of the alphabet. Fans of the show might take a hand in what visitors see and hear by remote. But the words and fingerprints of the artist are all over the work.

CONTINUING AND RECOMMENDED EXHIBITIONS, JULY/AUGUST, 2011

Barbara Kruger, installation view, 2011.

In this first local exhibition in over a decade, Barbara Kruger presents two discreet works that fill the gallery and confront the viewer in similar and different ways. The video installation "The Globe Shrinks" was previously presented at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York, where more projections enveloped the space. This smaller space makes the viewing of the work a more intimate experience. Within the projections, actors speak to the audience and to each other matter-of-factly, describing real-life situations where they acted badly. Intermittent textual fragments fill the walls. The larger than life-sized talking heads relate carefully scripted scenarios. A head occupies one wall then moves to another, creating a conversation across the room. Sometimes it’s a monologue other times a dialogue, and yet others are a recreation of an event. The experience is one of bombardment, of being talked at and through. Kruger syncopates the fragments with the utmost care, allowing the dark moments in between to resonate. In her signature style the in-betweens are filled with phrases such as "Blame it; Buy it; Kiss it; Fear it; Believe it; Love it; Blind it; Temp it; Share it" flashing on the walls, guiding, or controlling our interpretation of the work. Kruger's installation is intentionally fragmentary. Yet the fragments always coalesce into the whole. In addition to "The Globe Shrinks" a second gallery is loaded with vinyl lettering that covers walls, floors and ceiling. In her signature Futura typeface she assaults the viewer with language about money, power and desire in declarative statements. The white vinyl lettering is affixed to a black ground. Being "in" Kruger's installation is akin to being in a nightmare, where words come at you from every direction and from which there is no escape. Her work is always unvarnished political, cultural and social commentary (L&M Arts, Venice).

Jody Zellen

Jean Lowe, “Look 20 Years Younger,” 2011, installation view.

In “Look 20 Years Younger” Jean Lowe continues to push the limits in her exploration of our overconsumed, tchotchke hell-cum-paradise (or vice versa), by grinding high and low against each other as if with a high-powered sand belt. Several large and medium-scaled enamel on panel paintings are accompanied by her interpretations of 99¢ Only/discount store displays (her incarnation is unofficially dubbed “Discount Barn”). Shelves of warbly ceramic mugs say “You’re PERFECT,” while bottles of “Body Sculpt” in enamel on cardboard, live under a “Look 20 Years Younger” sign, with the subheading, “Must Be At Least 21 Years of Age,” all of which aptly conveys Lowe’s wry but not completely jaded sense of humor. There are also decorative dishes/platters, ceramic cans of “Tear Stain Remover,” and several shelves of her trademark papier-mâché books, including a free-standing remainder table, an audible sigh of sublime disappointment. A few of the paintings carry on from her last show here – chandelier-filled, European palace-type interiors that are chock-a-block with big box store aisles (a highlight this go-round features a mass reunion of gnome statuettes). More of the paintings are this time lined withtrompe l’oeil decorative landscape walls, conceptually a sort of meta-trumping: a faux within a faux. It’s cheesiness incarnate as an idea, but the imagery, crucially, is a little more evolved. An enamel, wood and cardboard popcorn popper serves as a metaphorical salve to help steel your art-going resolve – or assuage your battered sense of equilibrium – as you are coming or going from this “Unbelievable!” “Real Life” show (Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Santa Monica).

Michael Shaw

Laura Parker, “Rotations (Landscape in Green and Red),” 2009, chromagenic monotype prints, installation of 7 panels, 51 1/2 x 72”.

The two series of color photographs presented in Laura Parker's exhibition "Rotations and Rubbings" are made both with and without the camera. In the "Rotations" series Parker combines a projected image with a photogram so as to create a disconnect between the observable and the fabricated. Each image contained inside the circle is an abstracted landscape that is silhouetted against a black ground. The multiple panel works cascade up and down the wall, evoking the movement of the natural landscape. The "Rubbings" series consists of photographic abstractions made from rubbing the exposed and developed paper's surface, which exposes the colors underneath. Each of Parker's rubbings starts and ends as a circle that serves as a perfect complement to the “Rotations.” Both bodies of work explore what is possible when the real and the imagined are juxtaposed (dnj Gallery, Santa Monica).

Jody Zellen

Cindy Kolodziejski, “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” 2011, earthenware and painted cast iron frame, 15 1//8 x 13 1/2 x 3/8”.

Entitled "Portraits of Sorts and Curiosities," Cindy Kolodziejski's new ceramics come as something of a surprise. Best known for her intricate vessels that combine delicately painted images of the body with evocative and sensual forms, Kolodziejski transfers her keen eye and facile hand to found objects that are presented on the wall, each work in an unique frame. Scouring flea markets and yard sales, Kolodziejski has assembled a collection of strange objects which she subtly augments so as to transform them into something extraordinary. The intimate works demand close scrutiny. They juxtapose painted, drawn and sculptural elements depicting human, animal and abstract subjects. Ornate frames encase many of the assemblages, which are presented salon style on the wall forming a grid of curiosities to be marveled at. And with more than seventy objects that are at once cutting, humorous, suggestive and odd (Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica).

Jody Zellen

Tony Orrico, “unison symmetry standing,” “Penwald Drawings” series, 2010, photograph, 40 x 26”.

Tony Orrico has danced professionally with the Trisha Brown Dance Company as well as with Shen Wei Dance Arts, and it is clear that his background as a performer comes through in his artworks. In this, his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, Orrico fills the space with large works on paper made by repeatedly marking the paper with pencil or charcoal as his body moved across the surface. Orrico creates his drawings both alone in his studio as well as in front of audiences, who watch him move slowly across a surface using his body as a support from which he cumulatively marks the paper. The resulting drawings document routines that often last a number of hours, even days. This aspect of duration is visually recorded not only by the build-up of marks but by the paper itself, as often the surface is torn or withered from use. The abstract imagery recalls the body, or rather the body's movements, as it is easy to imagine the artist standing against the wall while moving his arms up and down to create marks on the wall or moving his kneeling body in circles drawing and erasing as he goes. The works are aggressive or delicate depending on the orientation of the gesture. While Orrico is not the first performer to document his movements via drawings - there are implicit references to Yves Kline and Robert Rauschenberg as well as Trisha Brown. His dedication to the craft and presentation of the drawings situates them in the realm of art rather than as documentation. A video documentary delving into how they were made provides fascinating insight (Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica).

Jody Zellen

“Europe’s Eclipsing Sensation, Houdini,” U.S. Sign Board Co., Russell Morgan, Cincinnati, lobby display, c. 1906, oil on plywood.
Kevin A. Connolly Collection. Photo by Richard Goodbody.

Step into the world of Ehrich Weiss, the immigrant son of a rabbi who transformed himself into Harry Houdini, the legendary showman and escape artist extraordinaire who astonished audiences. See family photographs, travel diaries, newsreels, posters, original props and an authentic copy of Houdini’s water torture cell. Gain a better understanding of how Houdini promoted himself, arranging spectacular, well-advertised, free performances for hordes of people, many of them immigrants themselves who had escaped terrible conditions. Houdini showed up where newsmen would be present. He also hired his own cameraman to record his super heroic, daring escapes: handcuffed, restrained by straitjackets or chains, buried in coffins, dangled above water. The show is peppered with responses from contemporary artists adding their own spin to the legend. A video by Allen Ruppersberg captures him in a straightjacket, reading from Houdini’s bio. Ikuo Nakamura works modern magic with a hologram. Tim Lee destabilizes your perspective with a book by Robert Smithson, held upside down. Petah Cohen’s sculpture, “Untitled, Trying to Fly,” reflects the dark side of Houdini’s life. There’s more, and it’s all pure magic (Skirball Cultural Center, West Los Angeles).

Diane Calder

MORIS, “El fuego no quemará a todos, ja ja ja,” 2011, installation view.

Given the almost complete dissociation of the typical fare served up by local galleries and museums from what’s been going on in the world the last decade, it is gratifying to come across “Collectiva.” The group show, curated by Esthella Provas and Yoshua Okón, includes conceptual works by Edgardo Aragón, Paola Cabrera, Gilberto Esparza, Monica Espinoza, Adriana Lara, MORIS, Daniela Ortiz, Ivan Puig, and Antonio Vega Macotela.  The tenor of what’s on display is established by the elegant nihilism of MORIS’ “El fuego nos quemará a todos, ja ja ja ja (The fire will burn us all, ha, ha, ha, ha),” a floor-mounted text work whose message is designed to be gradually revealed by the imprints left by visitor foot traffic. Espinoza’s whimsical “Cae la Noche (Night Falls)” invites visitors to listen in on recordings of the artist’s  “Good night!” telephone calls to randomly chosen homes around the globe. The contributions of Ortiz, Puig, and Vega Macotela are more overtly political. Puig’s “Opinion Leader” video uses identical images to show how their combination and recombination can produce contradictory narratives. Vega Macotela bartered time spent searching for a prison inmate’s son for a map of the inmate’s movements within the prison. The real kick in the pants, however, is Ortiz’s “Arma Blanca,” which resurrects an inflammatory coloring book depicting police as grotesque hairy pigs suffering righteous execution at the hands of armed and enraged young blacks. The Black Panther Coloring Book was attributed to the Black Panthers but was actually produced by the FBI to foment anti-Panther hatred in white neighborhoods. Rather than merely revive the painful memory of how the U.S. government decapitated the leadership of an organized African American insurgency, Ortiz ups the ante by accompanying the photocopied pages of the book with a history of its use in domestic psychological warfare written in Arabic; the viewer is prompted to note the racism that unites repression at home with aggression abroad (Honor Fraser, Culver City).

Mario Cutajar

Zhang Huan, “49 Days,” 2011, bricks and cast iron.

Chinese artist Zhang Huan’s "49 Days" opens with a brick pagoda that fills the main gallery space. This bell-shaped work is constructed from salvaged bricks collected from demolition sites around Shanghai. The pagoda houses a cast iron pig, a reference to a pig that survived for the 49 days also referenced in the exhibition’s title in the rubble of the 2008 earthquake; that pig was later adopted by the artist. In addition to the massive pagoda sculpture, Huan also presents large scale brick works in the shape of pigs and skulls. These enigmatic images function of multiple levels - as references to Chinese history and labor, to the cycle of life and death and to the value of animals in society. The works project an aggressive presence whose presentation speaks to wealth, power and to the sheer labor implied by their creation (Blum & Poe Gallery, Culver City).

Jody Zellen

Daniel Phill, “Euphorbia,” 2007, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 72”.

Works from Northern California artists Daniel Phill and Terry Thompson at first seem a disparate pairing. Thompson renders neon signage while Phill studies flora employing a gestural technique that nearly obscures the subject altogether. The former paintings are calculated and controlled, the latter are as organic as the plant life depicted. But both paint their worlds through a veil of ambiguity. The works contemplate the state of nature as it persists in the man made and natural environments. Thompson’s paintings are titled “Signs of Life,” a pun that alerts us to the activity that underlies the intricate typography, massive steel frames, large rivets, and neon tubing that announce “no vacancy” for local motels, promote small town burger joints, and tower above used car lots. While the signs are rendered representationally, Thompson aggressively crops them so that we remain uncertain as to what the sign announces. Phill titles his work “Flourish,” a clear enough hint that the subject is equally balanced between the flora depicted and the dramatically gestural brushwork by which it is implied. The picture plane of these paintings becomes obscured as it is covered with layers of pigment and varnish that enliven the canvases. They initially have a flattened appearance, but that deepens as we gaze (George Billis Gallery, Culver City).

A. Moret

Hamish Fulton, “The Names of Seven Men, Nepal,” 2009, pencil and colored pencil on paper, 7 x 7”.

“For a Long Time…” is a collection of works - from Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Hamish Fulton, Whitney Hubbs, Erica Love, Raymond Pettibon and Kehinde Wiley - which focuses on duration and the physicality endured in performance, and non-performance art works. A video work by Wiley assembles men in one quadrant of a television monitor, staring into the lens of the camera for over an hour. While they try to remain still and focused, their blinking momentarily interrupts the trance and reminds us that they are in fact moving. “Smile” captures the moment that each subject contorts his face into an artificial smile while remaining stationary and growing restless. In “Remote Control” a static camera is focused on Erica Love’s hand as it hovers in front of Barbara Krueger’s book “Control.”  Over time her hand spasms and shows signs of collapsing, but Love maintains Krueger’s characteristic ethos in her body and manages to remain in “control” of her appendage. The psychology and the physicality of participating in art are demonstrated in a photograph of Marina Abramovic’s performance “Rhythm 10,” where the artist laid out a set of knives on a stage and run each knife in between her outstretched hand. Each time she struck herself, a new knife was picked up and the process was repeated. Abramovic’s performance evokes to a detachment one feels when engaging in repetitive and trying acts. Despite the bodily pain endured and risk confronted during the performance, “Rhythm 10” is a reminder that the artist must remain vigilant and patient when confronting an art piece with an uncertain duration (Roberts & Tilton, Culver City).

A. Moret

Peter Sims, “Gobelin,” 2008.

Peter Sims’ very dense sculptural paintings would be the ultimate totems to non-objective fetishism were it not for their subtle but persistent associations to children’s toys. Both “The Spine is a Xylophone,” with its pastel rectangles mediated in a grid by a white center column, and “Cookie,” with its oddly childlike spectrum of blocks, allow in just enough design flair and pseudo-minimalist rigor so as to rapidly oscillate between being irritatingly cute and drably austere. “Riprap” is a horizontal painting with six columns of thick squares that decrease gradually in size from top to bottom, each column with its own color. The child’s toy association applies, but here the rather affronting aesthetic comes from somewhere far more mysterious. “Brightway” is a one-foot square piece with five ziggurat-style, brightly colored, square-peg-in-a-square-whole-type shapes. It amps up the childhood iconography while also managing to add a sublime level of fetishism. Three other works, entitled “Gobelin” (Nos. 1 to 3), are culled from Bauhaus textiles. While robustly visceral in their own way, aesthetically they get stuck in their decorativeness without being able to find their way out (Cardwell Jimmerson Gallery, Culver City).

Michael Shaw

Isaac Resnikoff. "The Things That Happened," installation view, 2011. Photo by:  Wild Don Lewis.

The aroma of cedar fills the small rectangular room; it’s a pleasurable scent that surprises the visitor as they climb the stairs to the exhibition featuring Isaac Resnikoff. We come to a series of five black and white photographs, each depicting a partially completed house the artist built in an empty lot behind his studio. The wooden structures look more like adult erector sets since the construction only involves basic two-by-fours that make up the skeletal structure of a building. After a structure was built to the artist’s satisfaction, he photographed it and then disassembled it, only to begin the next one. Each configuration has its own personality, although all are quite modest. It’s the wood sculpture placed in the center of the gallery that provides the smell, and it’s the piece that ties the entire show together. An organic and rounded exterior, it has the proportions of a giant pinecone with the bumpy surface of a boulder. There are a few holes that one can look through. Inside one can see the evidence of the geometrically cut pieces of wood that support it. Placed directly on the organic texture of the sculpture is a rectangle that looks like a plaque. Nothing is inscribed but its presence relates to the housing structures that have been built, photographed, and broken down. At once sculpture and landmark, the housing structures reference a fading past, the feeling of a moment just missed but still present thanks to that smell of cedar (Steve Turner Contemporary, Miracle Mile).

G. James Daichendt

HK Zamani, “Untitled (11),” 2011, oil on canvas, 60 x 72”

Those with deeper knowledge of the downtown and alternative scenes know HK Zamani as the pioneering director of POST gallery, which ran from 1995 to 2005, and has conducted 30-day show-per-day endurance exhibition runs during the past two Julys. Zamani’s own work has been conceptual and sculptural. But his recent exhibitions, including the current one, have served as a sort of ‘coming out’ as a painter, at least publicly.  With “In-between Air, Land and Sea” Zamani explores abstract landscapes with a rich painterliness that, while strongly evoking Philip Guston, is far less referential. Zamani often opts for the primal, and hits some of his best notes there, whether in the vaguely Forest Bess-like “Untitled Mounds,” the loopy lines-as-waves of “Untitled No. 25,” or the digesting-snake-like humps of “Untitled No. 2.”  That said, the larger “Untitled No. 10”, with its relatively more complex loops, is mesmerizing in its own esoteric way as well. All the works, indeed, are their own level of primordial. Moving forward I wonder whether Zamani will mine deeper into this land/sky terrain, deeper into himself, both, or find a new third way (CB1 Gallery, Downtown).

Michael Shaw

Gabriel de la Mora, “Fragil/Fragile,” 2011, mixed media installation.

“Fragil/Fragile” is as much a play on words about the fragility of art as it is an exhibition. In  “Fragile” is used conceptually, even humorously, alluding to the tenuous, throwaway aspect of our society and to an artist’s attempts to resurrect these so-called fragile items into artworks. In this display, artist Gabriel de la Mora employs letters from alphabet soup and tiny bits of post-it notes to create very small abstract installations, presumably of scenes from his life. He takes burned, puffed out, blackened pieces of paper, puts them under glass cases and calls them sculptures. But his most fascinating works are several sculptural installations of faces made from stiffened human hair affixed to boards. One face is reportedly a depiction of his father, made from the old man’s hair. The centerpiece of this small yet dynamic exhibition is one long, elegant worktable, like a lab table, on which most of the 100 works are exhibited, many under glass. Displaying such small works this way draws us in, leading to a careful perusal of the collection of objects to discern what they are really about. This produces a mood of profound concentration that is far more a product of the artist’s intervention than manipulation (Museum of Latin American Art [MoLAA], Long Beach).

Liz Goldner

“From Jerusalem to Jordan in 19th-century Photography” offers views of historical sites and scenes that reinforce connections to Bible stories from what is now Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. These pioneers of photography lived in an era when travel was indeed arduous and the process of securing clearly focused, detailed images was complicated and cumbersome. An 1840 engraving of Jerusalem, with a tranquil pastoral landscape in the foreground, was most likely made from an 1839 daguerreotype that may not have been quite so idealistic. Photographers like Francis Firth and Felice Beato turned from single image metal daguerreotypes to salted-paper or albumen silver prints that allowed for the production of larger editions on paper, in various sizes, for the growing numbers of buyers eager to possess evidence that the sites described in their Bibles actually existed. Customers were often disappointed with scenes from the Holy land such as Jacob’s Well or the modestly sized Garden of Gethsemane that did not live up to dreams and expectations of God’s theme park. However, stereographs of iconic architectural views dramatized in three dimensions, or portraits of stereotypical ethnic types in costume became popular. Felix Bonfils attracted buyers’ attention with photographs of lepers, huddled near Zion’s Gate. Other early nineteenth century photographers managed to sandwich negatives together, inserting extras such as camel caravans into otherwise unexciting views of dusty biblical sites, anticipating Photoshop’s ability to toy with photography’s reputation for authenticity by more than a century (Getty Villa, West Side).

Diane Calder

Painting by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.

The landscapes that comprise the central theme of “From Corot to Monet” display a homey European sensibility that is quite distinct from their American contemporaries’ romance of expansive wilderness. Emblematic of this is Corot’s “A River Scene with House and Poplars” (1850-55), which portrays a serene winter view of rural life. Under an overcast sky, wispy outlines of leafless trees frame a steep-roofed house sitting next to a placid river. This prosaic depiction is representative of the Barbizon School of painters, who worked mostly in the forest at Fountainebleau. The point of this exhibition is how they provided an aesthetic bridge between the landscape painters who came before — those who, even if they worked from sketches made en plein air, tended to idealize heroic aspects of the landscape — and the coming generation of Impressionist painters that launched the Modernist era (San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego).

Judith Christensen

While group shows are often challenging to encapsulate, 16 German Artists, artwork by living artists from that country has consistent magnetism and energy.  The exhibition includes 44 paintings, drawings and photographs, curated and brought here by Walter Bischoff, founder of Villa Haiss Museum and Walter Bischoff Gallery, both in Germany. The cohesion here is large, dynamic artworks, featuring bold brushstrokes, often in bright primary colors, several with figures showing through abstraction, as well as complex artistic techniques. All works are clearly contemporary in style, with many employing a variety of media and techniques, as well as large, bright swaths of color. Among the most vibrant works are three large abstract pieces, all with broad, visible strokes of red and black, by Hans Rentschler. Each of Steffen Fischer’s large, gestural pieces features a singular, human figure, simultaneously appearing and vanishing through the abstract overlay of paint. Photographs of street scenes by Tilmann Krieg, printed on aluminum, are deliberately out of focus; here print material and photographic techniques result in works evocative of impressionism. In Martina Bernasko’s paintings, human figures float in dessert-like landscapes, influenced by the artist’s 14 years living in sunny Spain. These works, along with those by 12 others in the 4,000 square foot gallery, add up to an exhibition exemplified by what could be called “Germanic” vigor (Soka University’s Founders Hall Art Gallery, Orange County).

Liz Goldner

Judith Liebe, “Heaven on Earth,” oil on wood, 24 x 18”.

Judith Liebe’s “Asian Landscape” is dominated by a large, luminous blue body of water in its center that draws us in. Bamboo shoots float in the water, while red foliage at the bottom and a bank of trees toward the top provide an unusual framework for a landscape with rich layers of paint. This piece, as well as several other paintings, has what Liebe calls, ”the complexity of its physicality through the application of the paint.”  She adds, “It is here that we find the difference between an ephemeral installation and a painting, which is surrounded by powerful silence.” Her painstakingly handled landscapes of ocean, sky, cornfields, foliage, trees and rocks, with varying horizon lines emphasize contemplative qualities. The artist’s imagination is directed to transform a scene into a formal arrangement that stimulates the viewer’s. Liebe’s “Finnish Landscape,” with its very high horizon line, depicts a complex, magnificent world below that line - one of fields with rock formations, rough foliage, fields and a small stream. What might have become an overly busy series of trivial moments emerges as an absorbing composition (Brett Rubbico Gallery, Orange County).

Liz Goldner

Chris Reilly, “Prana,” 2010, encaustic and mixed media on canvas/panel, 60 x 48”.

The work of three of the ten artists in “California Contemporary” stands out as embodying a range of up to the moment California culture. William Glen Crooks’ “Geary and Leavenworth” depicts a dynamic San Francisco in the muted light of afternoon — cars, scooters, people walking and talking, signs, and five-to-six story buildings on both sides of the street. The only visible sky is above the end of the street that heads downhill. Kyungmi Shin’s “Tony & Clark” is a collage full of color, cars and clutter that tend to make up urban Los Angeles. The bright orange of the side of the Public Storage building jolts against the intense green of JB Auto Transmissions. The cacophony of information on signs announces who, how much, what, and when. A less obvious, more subtle choice for this group is Christopher Reilly’s encaustic and mixed media “Prana.” The multi-layered surface suggests a billboard, peeling after a heavy rain, revealing an archeological layering of previous ads, the combination of which creates a more alluring image than a single layer possibly could. And the botanicals peeking through are a small reminder that even here nature survives in one form or another (Scott White Contemporary Art, San Diego).

Judith Christensen

Jennifer Steinkamp, “Digital rendering of Madame Curie,” 2010.

On the surface, brilliant yellow, luminous orange, and bright blue flowers seem to have little in common with Madame Currie’s theory of radioactivity. A cursory viewing of Jennifer Steinkamp’s video projection installation, created for this space, reveals some clues, in particular, the scientist’s interest in gardening. The Rambler rose and marsh marigolds, among others, are mentioned in her daughter Eve Curies’ biography. But, only after spending time tracing the movements of the clusters of colored flowers projected on the three giant walls of the gallery does the full impact of the piece hit. Like sub-atomic particles, the beautiful blooms gyrate and flow, recalling seldom-considered revelations from Chemistry 101: Solid objects are mostly empty space; atomic particles are in constant motion, even in the most solid of objects. Mostly, it is the beauty embodied in the structure of the unseen world and the wonder of discovery that the viewer senses (San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, Downtown, San Diego).

Judith Christensen