Advertisement

Review: Mark Hagen at China Art Objects

Share

While the title of Mark Hagen’s exhibition at China Art Objects, “Paleo Diet,” suggests a faddish return to first principles, the show tilts wildly at an array of references: Moorish, radical and corporate architecture, Truckin’ magazine, cows and rainbows, to name a few. Nevertheless, Hagen manages to pull from this stew an elegant meditation on the art-making process as a negotiation of opposites.

The first gallery is dominated by a large structure made from space frames: interlocking metal triangles that often support large, column-less spaces. Scattered around this airy, silver pavilion are projections of rainbow-colored light. These are created by coating the gallery’s skylights in a commercial film, but the overall effect is wondrous, as if the space frames were a giant prism.

ART: Can you guess the high price?

Advertisement

On the floor is a small structure made from blocks of black obsidian, a material once used to make mirrors. This “additive” sculpture is answered in the second room by its “subtractive” counterpart: a group of bone-like salt licks.

More oppositions appear in three space frame columns whose sleek angles are partially blunted with an asbestos-like coating of magazine paper pulp. There is also a suite of lovely paintings that hold patterns of discreet triangles in tension with mushy gradients of black and gray. Juxtaposing utility and wonder, addition and subtraction, hard and soft, Hagen finds art in the in-between spaces.

China Art Objects Galleries, 6086 Comey Ave., (323) 965-2264, through Oct. 26. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.international.la

Advertisement