Santa Monica

Matt Mullican’s “Untitled (Bath Stone)” is a vast, low-lying swath of limestone slabs carved with the plan of a model city, a metaphysical construct that has preoccupied the artist throughout this decade. (The title refers to the English city in which the piece was carved.)

Two oval areas on this plan contain incised clusters of images. One group consists of familiar pictographs from the international sign system the artist incorporates into most of his works--the little images that announce nearby amenities (telephone, restaurant) and indicate proper social behavior (a figure throwing litter in a basket). Carved into the other “image bank” are rows of generic insects, plants and animals.

Mullican’s use of such images hinges on the viewer’s easy recognition of these signs. By grouping them in mind-boggling arrays, he calls into question their seemingly fixed meanings and invites the viewer to devise personal alternatives. What is the relationship between the food chain represented in one image bank and the human imagery and consumer goods crammed together in the other? The answers seem to be entirely up to the whims of the imagination.

Other, two-dimensional work on view includes “Untitled (Round House),” a large acrylic and oil stick grisaille painting of the interior of a circular building used to switch locomotives. An incongruous billboard in this space repeats the city plan image, teasing the mind with a competing “fictional reality.” The blurred, grainy quality of the painting makes it look like a second-generation copy of an original we don’t get to see. It seems of a piece with Mullican’s musings on the way the language systems we use reconstruct the world at a second remove. (Richard Kuhlenschmidt Gallery, 1634 17th St., Santa Monica, to Dec. 2)