HOLLYWOOD

At first glance, Brian Pilon’s wall constructions resemble weathered industrial detritus left out in the rain for several months then brought indoors to be displayed as fetishistic urban relics: part architectural totem, part structural artifact. In reality, the pieces are constructed from wood, plastic pipe and acrylic, creating a trompe l’oeil effect that simultaneously breaks down and reinforces the deceits of altered realities.

Pilon roots his work in the basic principles of order and harmony, choreographing a simple vocabulary of rectangular sheets and protruding pipes into repetitious rhythms that draw upon the tenets of both Minimalism and Constructivism. He subverts the integrity of this abstract geometry, however, through political metaphors of confinement and oppression, whether binding the pipes with barbed wire or enclosing them within static frames.

The work’s shortcomings lie in Pilon’s refusal to rationalize the contradictions between appearance and artifice. He appears to suggest that all realities are indeed suspect, all attempts at representation founded on false premises. As an artist, Pilon plays the role of shaman, both perpetrator and ultimate revealer of rhetorical devices. Because the work cannot be taken at face value, we begin to question both the creative act itself and Pilon’s aesthetic parameters, creating an ambivalence that strips the work of its visceral and conceptual teeth.

An accompanying mixed-media installation combines a triangle motif, strobe and back lighting with ambient sound to evoke power structures and what Pilon calls “the illusion of an ambiguous journey.” This is the sort of thing that Malevich managed to turn into a phenomenological experience, but here Pilon merely regurgitates old Constructivist cliches and transforms them into vapid metaphor. Brian O’Keefe’s derivative sound track--a confused montage of radio noise, static and music reminiscent of John Cage’s 1950s “Imaginary Landscape” series--merely reinforces the sense of deja vu. (Goski Gallery, 1605 N. Cahuenga Blvd., to June 14.)