Erudite panorama rewards all who see it

Bibliophiles, especially those inclined toward scanning other people’s bookshelves, will find much to relish in Allen Ruppersberg’s “The New Five Foot Shelf and Other New Projects,” his fourth solo exhibition at the Margo Leavin Gallery. Language has long been a central preoccupation of this veteran Conceptualist, but in this recent work we see that interest zeroing in on books specifically -- both as physical objects, actual containers of language and as networks of ideas.

The title piece, which fills the main gallery, consists of 44 unframed, poster-size photographs of Ruppersberg’s former studio in Manhattan as well as what appears to be a set of the Harvard Classics. The 50-volume, clothbound series was published in 1910 by former Harvard President Charles Eliot, with the intention of condensing the basis of a respectable liberal education into 5 feet of shelf space.

The prints provide a panoramic view of a small, rather plain office piled high with papers, files, magazines, film canisters, knickknacks and, of course, books. It is a banal yet strikingly intimate self-portrait, in which every personal detail becomes a clue to the artist’s character, every book a dot on an emerging map of his intellectual life. Indeed, after a look at the art, film and theory titles that predominate in the left-hand corner (Bertrand Russell, Michel Foucault, Walter Benjamin, Andre Breton, etc.), the rack of pulp fiction tucked in around the middle (“The Bad Seed,” “Miss Dilly Says No,” “Commie Sex Trap,” “The Story of My Psychoanalysis”) and the older, statelier volumes on the right (including what is presumably a genuine edition of the Harvard Classics), it’s tempting to think that you’ve come to know the artist pretty well.

As for Ruppersberg’s new Harvard Classics, which are available at the gallery for perusal with gloves, they contain not Carlyle, Darwin, Voltaire, Machiavelli or Luther, as their spines promise, but five of the artist’s own texts, issued at a rate of about a sentence per page through roughly the first quarter of each volume. The remaining pages are blank, with an assortment of photocopied obituaries tucked enigmatically here and there.

The texts are as compelling as they are exasperating to read in such a format. (An electronic version, which is set to launch Tuesday on the Dia Art Center’s website, www.diaart.org/ruppersberg, is, fortunately, also available and much more conducive to browsing.) The most amusing text consists entirely of statements beginning with the phrase “Honey, I rearranged the collection.” Succinct and consistently clever -- Ruppersberg aptly referred to them as “New Yorker cartoons for the art world” when they appeared in a previous series -- the statements posit the collector as a manager of various systems of meaning, not unlike the Conceptual artist.

For example: “Honey, I rearranged the collection to show only works I bought to impress you”; “to show artists who were popular in the ‘80s but aren’t now and won’t be later”; “to see if we got our money’s worth”; “because I’m looking for a good argument”; “because I was fed up with our boring life.”

Another series -- grouped under the title “No, Sir, This library is mine not yours. But you may have this” -- expands on the notion of books as interlocking maps of ideas. In each, the same silk-screened image of a handsome domestic library is annotated in pencil with bibliographic information about dozens of books, the purported locations of which are indicated with an arrow. The genre shifts in each piece -- from poetry to modern fiction to 20th century art history -- suggesting multiple paths through the same seemingly unambiguous space.

What emerges in each of these works and gives the show its invigorating air of conceptual expansiveness is a fascination with the book, the shelf and the library as overlapping systems of potentially infinite complexity. Those with a penchant for bibliography surfing may find themselves lingering in its folds for quite a while.

Margo Leavin Gallery, 812 N. Robertson Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 273-0603, through April 17. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Your every move is being watched

Daniel Wheeler’s “You Are Here” -- a large-scale installation currently occupying the Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College -- offers several distinct positions from which to appreciate the implications of its rather ominous title.

The first -- and the work’s sole portal -- is an eerily anonymous black-and-yellow-tiled bathroom, its basins mysteriously devoid of drains. On the right, a doorway cut into the shower leads down a low, narrow tunnel of brown paper into a large, domed room with walls of earth-colored carpet lining. At the center is a ladder leading to a peephole in the roof.

Mounted along the walls are an assortment of aging appliances -- electric knives, hair dryers, can openers, a meat grinder, an ice crusher and so on. They spring randomly into action, depending on your movements.

A doorway at the left of the bathroom, on the other hand, leads into the open space of the gallery and to a sterile, white-curtained enclosure, which stands in marked contrast to the organic, yurt-like structure. Inside are five surveillance monitors wired to cameras that you may or may not have noticed while moving through the structure.

This is an unsettling but strangely persuasive bit of architectural fiction: a complex of discretely enveloping spaces, each bizarre and familiar in a particular way, that are more intimately connected than you initially suspect through a logic that feels distinct but somehow inaccessible -- like a dream. Wherever you are in the space, your presence permeates the whole. Inside, your image transmits outside. Outside, your gaze penetrates in. This makes it impossible to experience the work passively.

Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, 9045 Lincoln Blvd., Westchester, (310) 665-6905, through April 24. Closed Mondays.

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Words, words, words, rising aloft

Considering the quantity of scribbling, scratching and doodling that’s routinely passed off as drawing, Alexandra Grant’s first solo exhibition, now at sixteen:one, is a refreshing example of how the mark-making impulse -- fundamental to art but hardly an end unto itself -- can be taken to a higher level.

The earliest pieces (small works on paper, dating mostly from 2002) are doodles at root: compulsive constellations of individual words floating in loose, textured fields of paint and graphite. Appearing in multiple languages and entirely reversed, as if copied from a mirror, the words are rarely legible and suggest streams of subconscious static rather than coherent ideas.

These drawings have their charm, but what distinguishes the show are the larger works they appear to have spawned: a diptych painting that soaks the word constellations in pretty sheets of watery color, and two large, suspended sculptures that translate the motif into gorgeous, three-dimensional clouds of thin silver wire.

In a statement for the show, which is called “Homecoming,” Grant describes her process as a “diagraming of language,” cites numerous literary sources, and points to themes of “translation, identity, and dis/location.” The rather lengthy explanation is perfectly plausible but feels tangential in the end. Far more exciting to observe is the basic yet profound struggle of coaxing a visual idea into fruition, which Grant accomplishes admirably.

sixteen:one, 2116-B Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 450-4394, through April 18. Closed Mondays through Thursdays.

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Old techniques, used in new ways

San Francisco-based artist Joel Hoyer has been working with the age-old processes of egg tempera painting and metal leaf gilding for more than 30 years. He shows little sign, in his first L.A. exhibition, of having exhausted their possibilities.

The question of how such antiquated materials might translate into contemporary practice is compelling, especially in light of the current fascination with new media. Hoyer’s approach to the issue is experiential rather than theoretical.

Avoiding historical traditions altogether, he focuses instead on exploring and accentuating the intrinsic nature of each substance. The most striking works are monochromatic, multi-paneled paintings strewn with lava-like relief formations and coated in gold or silver leaf.

The compositions are spare and dramatic and show off the sensual luster of the material to its fullest. Also notable for their unadorned elegance are several slender, 7-foot staffs of wood, polished smooth and tipped with shiny 24-karat gold.

With the temperas -- used primarily in small monochromatic paintings and sculptures -- Hoyer exhibits the same desire for purity but with less exciting results. The colors themselves are wonderfully bright and clear but require a more interesting form: They don’t say much on their own.

All in all, however, Hoyer’s dedication to his media makes for a solid, intriguing body of work.

Circle Elephant Art, 4634 Hollywood Blvd., Silver Lake, (323) 662-3279, through Saturday.