ART REVIEWS : Larner Gives Sculpture New Perspective

Los Angeles artist Liz Larner says that “sculpture is about expanding where a surface begins or stops or changes.” An exhibition of her work on view at the Stuart Regen Gallery in West Hollywood suggests that she’s interested in closing the gap existing between viewer and art object because she positions her work in that very space. With roots in conceptual and minimal art, her work is about penetrating surfaces, getting into and under them, and she can be wickedly clever in pursuit of that aim.

This exhibition centers on a site-specific piece titled “Corridor” that transforms the main gallery into a sort of humongous mobile a la Alexander Calder. Sheets of metal cut into jagged, mismatched shapes and coated with shiny car paint in queasy colors are suspended from the ceiling and held in place by sandbags painted in corresponding hues. One metal component involves a row of metal prongs that are draped with a patchwork quilt pieced together out of crude synthetic materials (tacky velours and weird fuzzy cotton felt). A cacophonous symphony of artificial textures, the piece feels cheap in a high gloss way, evocative of work by Jeff Koons.

The components are positioned in such a way as to indicate a walkway that weaves through the piece and invites the viewer to enter. Having done so, one has the sense of being in the middle of an Abstract Expressionist painting. Perspective is, of course, one of the cornerstones of Western art, and in forcing us to view her work from the inside, Larner confounds the way we’re socialized to experience art. The traditional setup is we’re here and the art’s over there, but it’s impossible to get that kind of view of this piece because it moves when you do.

“Corridor” looks sculptural, but in fact it’s more about painting. Using industrial materials to create a pictorial effect, the piece is like a three-dimensional drawing designed to heighten our awareness of the way we experience line, color and space. Larner was trained as a photographer, and that schooling clearly gave her a keen understanding of the perceptual phenomenon behind pictorial illusion that continues to serve her well.

Stuart Regen Gallery: 619 N. Almont Drive, West Hollywood, to Feb. 12. (213) 276-5424. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

A German Phoenix: Born in 1939 Dresden, artist A.R. Penck was still a toddler when Allied bombers razed that German city, and he grew up surrounded by overwhelming destruction. The subject of an exhibition at the Fiorella Urbinati Gallery in West Hollywood, Penck is clearly the sort who is strengthened by hardship because he developed into an artist of the protean dimension of Picasso. Penck invests his work with tremendous vitality--he paints very big, with explosive brush strokes--and like Joseph Beuys is a sort of spiritual leader for many young artists, particularly in Europe.

Like several German artists of the last 30 years (Beuys and Anselm Kiefer are at the top of the list), Penck’s career has centered on the struggle to restore human content to art, and to piece together a system of belief out of the rubble of World War II. Penck is an idealist but he’s also a bit of a pessimist (or a realist, depending on your point of view) and the realm he conjures in his work is a primitive place populated by savages. There are lots of animals in his pictures and he’s big on stick figures too, and he frequently shows them doing bad things.

Acknowledged as one of the pioneers of the graffiti style popularized in the ‘80s by Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Penck has invented a pictographic alphabet whose exact significance is known only to him; however, the broader implications of his hieroglyphics are easy to read. Much of his work is a celebration of the simple, unadorned gestural mark, and in his use of it he reminds us of what art represents at the most fundamental level: the drive to communicate, the need to express oneself, the quest for immortality.

Two years ago, the Fred Hoffman Gallery mounted a splendid show of Penck’s paintings, and while this survey of small works and graphics spanning 13 years lacks the razzle-dazzle of that exhibition, it includes several handsome pieces. A small acrylic from 1982 titled “Trennung in Verdoppelin I” is like an illustration from a creation myth; we see a godlike figure towering over male and female forms who struggle to make their way through the ether. Awkward yet forceful, it’s a yeasty picture that shimmers with intimations of magic.

Fiorella Urbinati Gallery: 8818 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, to Feb. 28. (213) 271-8094. Closed Sundays and Mondays.