Santa Monica

Allan McCollum is one of 30 young artists included in the current MOCA blockbuster, “Forest of Signs.” In a concurrent one-man show titled “Perfect Vehicles,” McCollum presents a suite of work based on an idea he has been developing since 1979. With roots in Conceptualism and Minimalism, McCollum is more a theoretician than an object maker, and “Perfect Vehicles”--six solid concrete ginger jars, 6 1/2-feet tall and identical but for the fact that each is painted a different color--offers plenty of food for thought for those of rarefied appetites. Stripped of historical reference, mute and inscrutable, these profoundly empty vessels are designed to receive the needs and desires that govern one’s involvement with art. In other words, this is art as a blank screen; the viewer invests it with whatever meaning he chooses.

Exploring ideas of surrogation, authenticity, and art’s capacity to generate power and prestige, these mass-produced vases have the look of generic objects but as in work by Jeff Koons, they’re actually distortions on a theme. McCollum intends that his perfect vehicles function as caricatures rather than symbols of vases, and there is something unseemly about their exaggerated size; like overdeveloped body builders, they have a bullying presence. Fashioning familiar looking forms that in fact are unlike anything else in existence (they don’t resemble what we know as art), devoid of narrative, and completely without function, McCollum thwarts the impulse to invest “Perfect Vehicles” with superficial meaning. They remain utterly pure, three-dimensional vacuums waiting to be filled with that holiest of nectars, the avant garde party line.

Also on view is an installation by Nayland Blake that centers on a short story titled “Bernice.” Neatly printed on five green chalkboards, “Bernice” recounts the sorry tale of a young man smitten with his cousin, and obsessed with her teeth in particular. The fair maiden dies, he exhumes the corpse and extracts the marvelous teeth. Written in florid language evocative of Edgar Allan Poe, the story of “Bernice” is accompanied by four oddly kinky sculptural tableaux rooted in the themes of obsession and perfection. (Richard Kuhlenschmidt Gallery, 1634 17th St., to June 3).