ART REVIEW : Wry and Witty Observations Decorate Images of ‘Interiors’

In painting, the designation “interior” connotes images of indoor spaces. In this subjective century, it also suggests a look at the inner contents of people. That’s exactly what the LACE exhibition “Interiors” does through about 20 pictures by three geographically disparate artists. Francis Alys works out of Mexico City; Robin Tewes, New York; and Kevin Appel, Los Angeles.

They’ve been assembled in Hollywood by guest curator Rene Petropolous presumably because they have obvious things in common. Most striking is an appearance that, at a slightly careless glance, could cause one to mistake them all for work by one artist, David Hockney. All share his taste for honed-down composition and bright, childlike color with a slightly sarcastic edge. None of them, however, appears to aspire to anything like Hockney’s mastery of draftsmanship, compositional resolution or psychological density.

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This is not dumb art, despite a concerted attempt to look like it. A number of intertwined psychological games are at play. The clear resemblance to Hockney, for example, acts as a signal that these artists wish to achieve originality by pretending they have none. The confession of ineptitude is supposed to be winsome.

They do a convincing job of appearing both autobiographical and superficial. This art complains that growing up in the kind of secure, middle-class suburban environments depicted leaves artists helplessly shallow. They are the victims of decent upbringings.

Tewes sets the tone in little paintings that mimic the sincerity of amateur thrift-shop art. “Dawn of the Dark Ages” shows a little girl in her nightie standing on her bed. The room appears bright, cheery and private except that the window has been bricked in. She makes a hand-shadow puppet of a wing on the barricade as if wishing to fly away. Walls are inscribed with tiny, neat script that spells out longings like “No more chores” and fears like “Dark Future.”

Appel’s unpeopled interiors might be read as L.A. architectural criticism. One called “Indoor Outdoor Living” echoes the kind of airy architecture pioneered here by Richard Neutra and Rudolf Schindler. In present context, however, these images function as a jeremiad against an excess of efficiency and a paucity of privacy.

From its beginnings, avant-garde art can be read as a kind of critique of bourgeois existence. Massive literary and cinematic evidence attests that conventional middle-class life can be sterile and crushingly banal. Rock stars like the flamboyant David Bowie have credited the aridity of their tract-house backgrounds with being so galvanically boring they drove them to stardom.

So why don’t these painters just get mad and revolt? Alys provides the probable answer in “Killing the Dog.” It depicts a family mutt under the kitchen table. The only sign that it’s being put to death is that the canvas has been loosed at one end and rolled over the image of the pooch. The message is that artists have been so successfully housebroken they don’t even know how to get angry. The best they can do is make wan symbolic gestures.

Members of the trio seem to achieve what they set out to do. The work is at turns witty, wistful and wry. It seems to make no demand other than a moment’s notice. It invites forgetfulness. If it represents an authentic expression, it’s that of a dispirited generation existing in a vacuum between the past and the future.

* LACE, 6522 Hollywood Blvd., through May 26, closed Mondays and Tuesdays, (213) 957-1777.