ART REVIEW : ‘MILLION STORIES’ IN SEARCH OF A STORY LINE

Five artists attempt to retool the narrative form in “Eight Million Stories in the Naked City,” on view at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions through Feb. 8.

Curated by Elaine Wintman, the show gets a fair degree of mileage out of an idea that’s hardly revolutionary: Linear narrative structure has been in a state of siege since the birth of the modern novel, and technology has dealt it more than a few body blows in recent years.

The fragmented editing of the “Miami Vice” genre of TV, video games and MTV have helped create an audience increasingly adept at filling in the blanks of a given story. For proof of that, look to the highly successful pop fairy tales of New York avant-gardists Robert Wilson, Laurie Anderson and David Byrne.

None of the pieces in “Eight Million Stories” is as accessible as the work by those artists. In fact, each tale on view at LACE is essentially a mystery. Nor are any of these stories particularly upbeat; when these artists aren’t busy moralizing they’re either angry or resigned.

The only artist to reveal a trace of whimsy is Annetta Kapon, whose simple line drawings, displayed in sequential rows, cleave for the most part to the old-fashioned storytelling tradition. In “Movie,” she chronicles the ups and downs of romantic love, while “Slow Motion” storyboards the step-by-step process of downing a handful of pills.

Barbara Kruger shows nine mixed-media prints, each depicting an oddly cropped image and a single word. Read from left to right, the prints spell out the sentence, “We will no longer be seen and not heard.” Human hands appear in each image--hand to mouth, for instance, or a pair of praying hands--hands that are, in fact, translating the printed words into sign language for the deaf. Whatever story Kruger is attempting to tell, the clues she offers are minimal.

Similarly, Linda Nishio’s mixed-media installation boils down to a single statement. She projects hers on the wall with a light box and it reads: “For those willing to accept--no proof is needed. For those unwilling to accept--no proof is enough.” Nishio’s piece also includes a book titled “Trio,” which is composed of a series of photographs of people with the words “pillar of strength” projected onto their chests. “Trio’s” text offers theories on the various ways that the ego affects our perceptions.

Lisa Bloomfield’s “War Comics I--V” brings the horrors of war down to a personal level. Bloomfield uses enlarged details of images culled from Life magazines of the ‘40s and groups an average of five of them on a sheet of paper. Accompanying the images is a simple, declaratory text along the lines of “rage had clouded his reason before.” The visual elegance of the piece juxtaposed with the subject at hand is oddly affecting. And it’s easy to fill in the blanks of the story being told here as, unfortunately, we know it far too well.

Completing the show is a section of Doug Huebler’s ongoing project, “Global Crocodile Tears.” Begun in 1978, the piece is described by Huebler as an attempt “to photographically document the existence of everyone alive.” Toward that end he completely deconstructs the narrative form, offering in its place printed sequences of dialogue between pairs of people, painted copies of classics from art history--a Mondrian in this case--photographs, and various observations by the artist which are endorsed with a flourishing autograph.

Among other things, this piece appears to be about the mechanics of the fabrication of meaning, but ultimately the story Huebler is attempting to tell has grown so vast and unfocused that its wiggled out of his grasp. Dispensing with almost every vestige of the storytelling tradition in his attempt to breathe new life into an old form, Huebler has thrown out the baby with the bath water.

This is a problem with much of the work on view here; the average reader wouldn’t make it past the first page if these baffling stories were between the covers of a book.