ART REVIEWS : Cracking the Code to Kounellis’ Humanism

Many people miss the spirit of humanism in contemporary art. Yet certain seemingly cold and minimal works are brimming with concern for humankind, if only you can crack the code of the artist’s vocabulary of materials and forms.

In his first Los Angeles solo exhibit, Jannis Kounellis continues to pursue social themes that have engrossed him since the late ‘60s. His installations of untitled works--configured and situated to fit a specific space--are essentially ruminations about the tension between the individual and the fragmented, impersonal state of contemporary society.

A Greek in his mid-50s who has lived his adult life in Europe, Kounellis is steeped in a world-weary awareness of history and culture that is foreign to most Americans. The Arte Povera movement of the ‘60s stemmed from left-wing political beliefs, yet it cloaked its desire for social change in a romantic and literary approach. Artists transformed natural objects and industrial materials in poetic ways that leaned heavily on Europe’s agricultural past.

Kounellis’ recent batch of work lacks the startling intensity of his early pieces, in which he first incorporated such elements as fire and live animals. In any case he has always risked appearing overly naive and fanciful in a brisk, hard-edged world. But with great elegance of means, he remains a philosopher-artist dropping oblique clues about the condition of the human race.

In one piece, a single man’s shoe emerges from either end of a rusted metal I-beam, as if the unseen body had been flattened into invisibility. In another piece, two short I-beam shelves squeeze a woman’s patent pump and hold a trio of small, irregular metal-wrapped packages.

Are these objects beloved possessions bundled for transport? Votive offerings? Waste to be disposed of? In any case, they are humble tokens of the way humans attempt to organize their lives and thereby attempt a control, however ineffectual, over their moment in history.

In a massive wall piece, heaps of coal are held in place by I-beam shelves and sheets of glass on five of eight lead-covered steel panels. The other three panels are unadorned except for the patterns formed by oil stains left from pressing the lead into flat sheets. In the center of the piece, lead sheeting unrolls to the floor like a bolt of cloth.

Coal is a familiar component of Kounellis’ work. Formerly vegetable matter--a living thing--the fuel has functioned for Kounellis as a symbol for humanity. Compression (representing the weight of history) and containment (of the human spirit) are also frequent themes of his.

Might the slightly iridescent sheen of the oil be the romantic lure of history? Are the transparent glass panels a sign of humankind’s inability to see the bonds that constrain it? Surely this is Kounellis at his most hermetic.

Margo Leavin Gallery, 812 N. Robertson Blvd . , to Aug. 18.

The Explosive Moment: Coop Himmelblau, a maverick architecture firm based in Vienna and Los Angeles, is known for bizarre-sounding pronouncements and practices that seek to undermine cliches of the profession. An exhibit of models, drawings and plans for recent projects--including three in Southern California--is leavened with idiosyncratic remarks from co-founders Wolf D. Prix and Helmut Swiczinski.

“The first drawing we do was and is always the most important one to us,” the partners explain. For them, this drawing establishes a “psychic ground plan,” and the hand that executes it is “a seismograph of those feelings created by space.”

Sometimes the “explosive moment” of thinking on paper happens with closed eyes, a technique reminiscent of the Surrealists’ automatic drawings. In the show, the theme of sudden inspiration is bolstered by the inclusion of scratchy sketches on a cocktail napkin, an envelope, a resort’s complimentary scratch pad. Ah yes, inspiration doesn’t necessarily strike in the office.

But damned if even a wobbly, dark pencil scribble--which seems to have been executed with the single-minded fierceness of a 4-year-old--doesn’t evoke the energetic way leaning, tilting and flying forms collide to create what the firm calls “open architecture.” This is architecture with a kinesthetic awareness, expressive of the feel of a particular site as well as of the jangled rhythms and jumbled texture of contemporary life.

The centerpiece of the exhibit is Open House in Malibu, a 2,050-square-foot beachfront dwelling--as yet unbuilt--that rests on three tweezer-like points and sports a huge glazed area on the facade that tilts backward as if it were impersonating a giant sports car windshield. A cantilevered balcony in the rear looks somewhat like a sampan, the ground floor is not divided into separate rooms, and in fact none of the living areas was designed to serve a specific function.

The other local (unbuilt) projects are Rehak House in Malibu--deftly organized around two intersecting “arms” that make a steep slope workable--and Melrose I, a crashing intersection of rectangular volumes that are hard to visualize as a viable two-story commercial building.

The most genuinely brilliant of the projects seems to be Ronacher Theatre in Vienna (expected to be completed in 1993), in which a 19th-Century historical monument will be augmented with four new multipurpose stages. The forward-surging roof is literally the crowning touch, “bracing” the stately old building as if reaching out to succor an elderly friend.

Richard Kuhlenschmidt Gallery, 1634 17th St., Santa Monica, to Aug. 18.