Santa Monica

It isn’t often that you hear people sighing or laughing in an art gallery. But work by French conceptual artist Sophie Calle has such an immediate and intensely human presence that it evokes a visceral response. Her simplest and best piece is “The Blind.” She met 23 men, women and children who were born blind and asked them “what their image of beauty was.” The work consists of a photograph of each person, the text of their reply to the question and color photographs of the images they mention.

The notion of beauty by hearsay (“A starlit sky must be beautiful,” one person says) rather than by first-person experience initially seems sad and strange. Several people mention works of sculpture that can be “seen” by touch or particular colors that sound appealing. One man claims he doesn’t “need” beauty (“Since I cannot appreciate beauty, I have always run away from it”). Another says he thinks his room is beautiful--”at least I think so and I believe what I want to believe.”

The contrast between the humdrum object in the photograph and the wishful, even worshipful words of the speaker often has an indescribable poignancy. But the piece also suggests links with the sighted world--our tendency to make judgments based on received rather than first-hand information and the odd variety of ways we justify any fervent belief.

All of Calle’s works are text-and-photograph documents of her relentless investigations into people’s habits and thoughts. Some of these pieces--like “The Hotel,” for which she worked as a chambermaid, eavesdropping on guests’ conversations and examining their possessions--are apt to stifle the reader (and the subject) in a crush of minutiae.

But other pieces have a disarmingly naive, anarchic quality. For “The Sleepers,” Calle invited 23 strangers into her bedroom, one at a time, to “give me a few hours of their sleep.” She posed a laundry list of questions (“Is sleeping a source of pleasure for you?”) and recorded, in elaborate and weirdly compelling detail, their answers and refusals, and the way they looked as they slumbered. Voyeurs all, we soak this in and wonder what kind of subjects we’d make. (Fred Hoffman Gallery, 912 Colorado Ave., to Sept. 2.)