Wilshire Center

Have you ever wondered what kinds of lighting the experts use in their homes? Are you entirely clear about the distinctions between a Watt-Miser 120-Watt Indoor Reflector Flood and a 3-Way Soft-White Reader Light? New York artist collaborators Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler have cooked up an installation with eight discs of sandblasted glass, each inscribed with the name of a man and a room in a house, and each illuminated by a different type of General Electric bulb. The men are supposedly real-life GE lighting specialists who use the designated bulbs in one of the rooms of their homes.

Ericson and Ziegler make a practice of working with non-art materials and finding unexpected sorts of things to analyze and pigeonhole. Their work contains both a subversive intellectuality and a sly visual appeal.

Each bulb casts a distinctive pattern of light (a “distinctiveness” that is really mass-produced, of course). Because the piece hangs in the gallery, the viewer is likely to begin to analyze each bulb’s light-emitting quality only to realize that the aesthetic quality of the light is really bound up with the utility of the object. (If you’re buying a bulb for your bedroom, you’re likely to choose it because of the kind of light it throws.)

So here you are, holding the concept of “bedroom” or “kitchen” or “closet” in your mind while trying to match it with the kinds of light thrown by various bulbs. You’re performing the same kind of mental gymnastics you’re apt to do in front of a conceptual piece of art (which this is) and simultaneously realizing this is what you do in a utilitarian, daily-life context. Clever stuff, and rather delicious at that. (Burnett Miller Gallery, 964 N. La Brea Ave., to Feb. 11.)