What You Make of It : Charles Ray Designs Works to Confront and Baffle Viewers

Did you hear the one about the rotating circle? Well, there was an 8-inch-diameter circle cut into the museum wall, and it was called “Rotating Circle.” People expected it to rotate, but it seemed to be standing still. Some figured it was some kind of contemporary art hoax. Actually, the damn thing was just spinning too fast for the eye to catch.

The circle is one of nine recent pieces by Los Angeles artist Charles Ray designed to confront and baffle the viewer (through Sept. 23) at Newport Harbor Art Museum. Ray has said he is “really interested in the relationship of people to things.” He considers his work incomplete without the presence and mental participation of the spectator.

Even his early sculpture--stacked pieces whose weight and compression alone kept them from tumbling over--was more about activity than making a finished object. Not just his activity, mind you, but also the audience’s: its sense of being present at a potentially dangerous site. Later, he made elegantly spare sculptural pieces in which he imprisoned portions of his body for brief but physically arduous periods of time.

The works on view don’t rely on his presence, but they do involve the viewer in some odd situations. “Bath,” for example, is an uptilted bathtub recessed into the wall and filled with water. Although you realize that a sheet of glass keeps the water from inundating the entire gallery, the built-up force of the water remains an awesome threat. At the same time, the purity of the image--the curving white porcelain “frame,” the transparent oval of pale greenish water, the remnants of metal fixtures --suggests the refined aloofness of minimal sculpture.

“Ink Box” appears to be a black cube with a high-gloss finish. But closer attention reveals that the top surface of the cube doesn’t have the texture of a solid object. In fact, it’s ink. So an object that initially seemed to partake of the cold, unworldly perfection of minimalist art turns out to be a messy, potentially destructive fabrication.

Ray also seems to be playing off the in-the-know complicity of sophisticated viewers of minimalist art on a totally different, humorously deadpan level. Viewers of his cube are indoctrinated into the crazy secret of the ink, which is infinitely less complicated--though just as provocative--as the writings of art theorists.

With “Mannequin”--a young male department store mannequin wearing unremarkable leisure clothes and horn rims--Ray returns by another route to his earlier interest in a visible human presence. With his posture of utter indecisiveness and ineffectiveness, the mannequin is just a callow cipher. Normally, we’d be interested in him only because of what he’s wearing: That’s his function. Coming across him in a museum setting is disconcerting because he’s such a human zero. And yet . . . we sometimes look at real human beings in much the same way.

ART LISTINGS, Page 21

What

“Charles Ray,” nine works by the Los Angeles conceptual sculptor.

When

10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays through Sept. 23.

Where

Newport Harbor Art Museum, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach.

Whereabouts

Take Jamboree Road to Santa Barbara Drive, just north of the Coast Highway. San Clemente intersects with Santa Barbara.

Wherewithal

$3 adults, $2 students and seniors, $1 for children 6 to 17. Free for everyone on Tuesdays.

Where to call

(714) 759-1122.

IN LAGUNA: TURNING THE TIDE

Work by 20 painters who moved the Southern California art scene out of its provincial rut is the focus of “Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists, 1920-1956” at the Laguna Art Museum. The artists include Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg. (714) 494-6531.

IN LONG BEACH: LAUGHING MATTERS

A summer festival at Long Beach Museum of Art tries to bridge art and pop culture. There’ll be performance art events and film and video shorts, including “Cathode Comedy,” a program of films and videos about TV by artists and others, today, Aug. 2, at 8:30 p.m. (213) 439-2119.

IN LOS ANGELES: THE DECISIVE YEARS

“The Decisive Years”--1945-60, when American art ruled the roost--are spotlighted in works from the permanent collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art through Nov. 18. Artists include Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman. (213) 621-2766.