PERFORMANCE ART REVIEW : Asturias, Castagna at Northridge

Guatemalan politics, buddy-buddy conversations and abrupt passages of movement served as the raw components of “Duos and Solos,” a concert by Alvaro Asturias and John Castagna in the art gallery at Cal State Northridge on Thursday night.

Part of “Variations III,” an exhibition by “emerging” artists organized by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and Pasadena-based Fellows of Contemporary Art, the performance pieces are superficial interpretations of earnestly programmatic themes: a suicide that can’t be prevented, random minor injuries inflicted in daily life, friends who skirmish in friendly conversation after shooting each other in a war zone.

In a new piece, “Longshorewayman,” Castagna offered light, nervous leaps and turns, torso shudders with arms outstretched and fingers gnarled, and frozen sequential machine-operating poses. But neither they nor a graceful mouth-wiping gesture suggested the sort of guy who’d be cast for Bernstein’s “On the Waterfront,” excerpted for part of the taped accompaniment.

While Castagna pursued his fussy studio-dance mode and substituted an unconvincing staginess in place of real acting, Asturias’ gravely unembellished manner of speaking and moving lent a piercing, conversational directness to a lean monologue about conditions in his homeland (“Solo”).

But worthy movement ideas were in short supply, draining the brief sketches of both plausibility and metaphorical depth.