ART REVIEWS : Bunn Peers Into Optics With Wit and Energy

There is an enormous amount of energetic wit behind David Bunn’s latest assortment of frankly didactic viewing devices. That wit acts as a kind of self-deprecating chuckle as prismatic telescopes and viewing tubes studiously direct the viewer to sight, then contemplate bits of wall, floor or trees outside a window. All that peering revels in framing “found” concrete flaws that resemble maps of South America and doorways optically spliced and compounded to suggest cubist fragmentation.

Having some things in common with Markus Raetz’s art-as-perception, Bunn’s narrative on the power of art (and art spaces) to focus vision has a broader scope that dips into all structures of belief. For Bunn, a point of view is mutable and infinitely relative. So we get the treat of being able to tow around a glass-enshrined hanging plumb-bob-on-wheels, labeled “The Center.” Or we can stand in a room filled with fire-nozzle viewing scopes, peering at cards with ambiguous but lightly provocative legends. The top card is usually something innocuous like “A VIEW FROM THE EDGE.” But behind that card the message “AN ENTIRELY SUSPECT VIEW” immediately raises questions about assigned positions and the truth of their accepted threat or virtue.

More accessible than the installation he did for LACMA’s “Deliberate Investigations” last year, these playful objects have a kind of Dr. Seuss wackiness. They turn what is expected of the viewer into a delightfully unpredictable celebration of the human capacity to shift mental gears.

Roy Boyd Gallery, 1547 10th St., to Saturday.