PERFORMANCE ART : ‘Rocky Shore’ Hits the Beach

Quirky is the word for Tobi Redlich’s performance piece, “Rocky Shore,” which unrolled Saturday afternoon at Santa Monica Beach in a co-production of the Santa Monica Arts Commission and the Cactus Foundation.

Dressed in spanking white sportswear, Redlich raked the sand while expounding on her “Big Rock Theory.” If you’re walking down the street, see, and a big rock falls on you, fear not. It has happened for a reason.

Accompanied by recorded ocean sounds, Redlich stood on one of the twin concrete “performance platforms” and gravely assumed pivoting discus-thrower stances (as God?) to heave various-sized rocks and some bouncing painted hunks of plastic foam onto the sand.

She told us how comforting she found the slow rate at which rocks change. Shaking pebbles in a bucket before strewing them about and pouring sand from a watering can, she offered the piquant observation: “Rocks understand sand; it’s their future.”

And then she and the rock rolled and tumbled toward the ocean until they were both out of sight. Wispy and scattershot though it was, the piece nevertheless had a sweet, transparent simplicity.