LA CIENEGA AREA

Larry Johnson, Tony Tasset and Christopher Wool are united by an interest in the utopian tenets of Modernism, specifically its attempts to transcend all social and aesthetic boundaries to create a universal language beyond the artificial distinctions between high art/design, painting/furniture, elitist/popular media. That the results disclose such a false optimism, such alarming emptiness, tells us more about the myth of the original Modernist premise than any obvious shortcomings among the artists themselves.

In Tasset’s case, this new hybrid is labelled “Domestic Abstraction.” Whether using a framed black-and-white animal hide or black leather seat cushion with red, yellow and blue buttons, Tasset transforms articles of fashion/decor into slick collectibles. Because their visual vocabulary alludes to that of Modernist abstraction, a once vital avant garde has been safely co-opted and domesticated, fulfilling its universal intensions but paradoxically robbing it of its aesthetic teeth. Similarly, Wool uses a repetitive, painted black floral pattern on sheet aluminum to destroy distinctions between “serious” aesthetic discourse (the work alludes to expressionist and minimalist vocabularies) and the more mundane functionalism of interior design.

Johnson’s Ektachrome photographs offer more complex insights, largely because they critique both Modernism and its cynical co-option by the market. By re-photographing a series of CBS News captions in different ambient lighting, Johnson effectively empties the media of all significance, reducing informational systems to framed text-cum-wall decoration. Thus all language, including the World News, is potential furniture, much like Matisse’s “good armchair.” (Kuhlenschmidt-Simon Gallery, 9000 Melrose Ave., to Aug. 22.)