ART REVIEWS : ‘Flora’: An Ecology-Oriented Exhibition That Grows on You

An unnatural alliance is forged between man and nature in “Flora,” a fascinating exhibition curated by Deborah Irmas. Including six works by four artists, this is a show of living art--all the pieces involve plant life that has been built into an artwork in such a way that it can continue to thrive. The show reflects the current trendiness of ecological issues, but more than that, it reads as a mannered fin de siecle folly that’s vaguely creepy. “Flora” presents nature in a controlled form, preserved in a bell jar for our inspection. Perusing these forced blooms, you feel as if you’re inside the laboratory of a mad scientist.

The centerpiece of the show is Kim Yasuda’s elaborate installation, “Regretfully.” The piece begins with massive wrought iron gates evocative of an old English garden. Pass through the gates and you enter a chamber where a small rose tree, in bloom, has been installed horizontally so that it appears to be (and actually is) growing out of the wall at eye level. An ecosystem has been built into the wall to sustain the tree. Yasuda then had carpenters re-position two previously existing skylights and had a small pool of water built onto the surface of one of them; this causes patterns of shimmering light to flutter into the chamber. The skylights also function as a sundial and shine down on 12 linen handkerchiefs suspended from the ceiling by cotton thread. The elaborate engineering the piece requires threatens to upstage the poetry of its central idea, but ultimately it comes together beautifully. It’s a strangely powerful piece, at once haunting and absurd.

The remainder of the show is given over to one of a kind freak hybrids. Clare Edington has turned an old hair dryer into an aquarium filled with aquatic plants, and has converted a vanity table housing evergreen plants into a sauna that spews forth pine scented steam. Lynn Aldrich’s “All I Know So Far” is a row of living cactuses cut into the shape of books and arranged on a bookshelf, while Wendy Adest’s “Summer Dress” is a sun dress sprouting wheat grass.

A dislocating interweaving of the natural with the manmade, the show diminishes the grandeur of nature by employing it as just another color on the artist’s palette. Cultivated and confined, nature has been refashioned into the antithesis of itself; consequently, this curious show reeks of death.

Also on view are figurative paintings by Dan McCleary. Favoring the loose, lyrical brushwork associated with Bay Area Figuration, McCleary devotes himself to portraiture, but for occasional forays into landscape. Combining the mute frontality of Alex Katz’s portraiture with the melancholy ennui of Edward Hopper, McCleary depicts serious, unsmiling subjects who appear to be deeply adrift in their own heads. Even his double portraits are awash in alienation. In “Brother and Sister” we see two people who look virtually identical; despite the resemblance, despite the fact that they’re touching each other, the strange looks on their faces puts them light years apart.

Krygier/Landau Gallery, 2114 Broadway, Santa Monica, to July 28.

Mining a Mother Lode: An exhibition of conceptualist sculpture by Vik Muniz is too clever by half. Exercises in Neo-Dadaist slapstick that make their point to the sound of a rim shot, Muniz’s work combines the deadly irony of Post-Modernism with a labored sense of whimsy; the combination of these sensibilites makes for art with all the charm of a fallen souffle.

Just 28 years old, the Brazilian-born artist moved to New York six years ago, and he’s obviously been immersing himself in Manhattan’s local lore. Traces of Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince and Haim Steinbach pop up in various works. Mostly, however, Muniz mines the mother lode opened up by Duchamp. However, Duchamp addressed the split between life and art with the grace of a master aerialist, while Muniz attacks the problem with a leaden hand.

Meret Oppenheim’s fur-lined teacup--a Dada classic--seems to be the prototype for much of Muniz’ work. We see an oversized pair of clown shoes cast in bronze, an entire set of encyclopedias bound together in one binding, a motorcycle helmet that completely covers the head thus obstructing vision, and a plastic skull embellished with a clown nose made of simulated bone. Slickly crafted thought they are, Muniz’s visual puns are emotionally flat; worse than that, they’re neither thought provoking or very funny.

Meyers/Bloom Gallery, 2112 Broadway, Santa Monica, to July 28.

Out of the Shadows: The id is unleashed in work by Bruce Conner, a multimedia artist who hammers out his work in the darkest corners of his subconscious. A master of the subliminal nuance, Conner is best known for his seminal assemblage work of the late ‘50s, but as is revealed in a museum quality mini-retrospective, the darkly beautiful sculptural work Conner turned out three decades ago was merely the prologue to an impressively prolific career. Including paintings, drawings, engraving collages and assemblages, the show features several previously unexhibited pieces that shed valuable light on aspects of Conner’s creative sensibility that have remained in the shadows for much of his career. Regardless of what medium he uses, however, Conner has remained unwaveringly faithful to the vision that’s central to his sensibility; all of his work seems to reside in the same dank, festering dream where “Eraserhead” lives.

Whereas Conner’s sculpture looks grungy and jerry-built, his drawings and engraving collages are pristine and impeccably controlled. All of the work, however, is similarly hermetic, mystical and obsessive. His drawings in particular hum with the hysterical, twisted ecstasy of a speed freak. In a set of ink drawings from 1974 we find a sheet of paper almost entirely blacked out but for sprinkles of white/light; the series grows increasingly dark as it progresses towards the final image which is virtually black. Much of Conner’s work is marked by a compulsive filling of pictorial space, which is a common characteristic of art of the insane. Conner is by no means insane, but his work does fearlessly charge into different realities that most of us find rather unsettling.

In an assemblage from 1959 titled “Walkie-talkie,” a strange form (a doll’s arm attached to a baseball?) erupts from a shack-like structure tightly packed with matter, while the dead eye of a dirty doll’s head peers through a hole in the ceiling. Shivering with a sense of entrapment and despair, the piece is a perfect embodiment of psychic nausea.

Michael Kohn Gallery, 920 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, to July 21.