Santa Monica

New York artist Paul Laster uses famous photographs culled from books, catalogues and magazines, alters them with colored designs transferred to the image with transparent 3M tape and then renames them with the titles of well known pieces of sculpture and painting. All this shifting of image and context makes for an odd juxtaposition of photography and the “fine arts.”

Laster’s designs layered onto the photographic image seem to be an attempt to obscure by creating decorative pattern from the process of the alteration. In “The Palace At 4 A.M.” an Edward Weston coiled nude is covered with puzzle strips of lightly colored tape while in “Birthday” an intense young man is blotted out with tape covered in crayon colored circles of different sizes. Heavily conceptual, the work’s most interesting visual contradiction is the way the dots and tight patterning dominate the image and cancel out the transparency of the tape.

In the back gallery is a small array of some of Charles Eames furniture that used plywood as a functional but aesthetic material while pushing design into the nitty gritty world of industrial production in the 1940s. The designs still feel as utilitarian and comfortably uncomplicated as they did back when they occupied so many middle class homes and offices. It is a tribute to Eames’ design parameters that the economy and practicality of the pieces has kept them in mass distribution so long and only now are they becoming collectors items. (Of the several objects presented, a lounger and dining chair are still in production). But Eames’ undulating plywood “potato chip” chairs and his easy-to-stack, fiberglass “bucket” seats are still a part of the American psyche. Scattered throughout airports, government buildings and schools, they remain an apt description of America’s need for streamlined, economical, functional design after World War II. (Pence Gallery, 908 Colorado Ave., to April 1.)