ART REVIEWS : A ‘Contemporary Assemblage’ of Politics, Desires

A group show at L.A. Louver Gallery called “Contemporary Assemblage: The Dada and Surrealist Legacy” attempts to illustrate ways in which assemblage art is a further articulation of ideas first introduced by the dadaist and surrealists. Curated by Rhona Edelbaum, the show makes its point by focusing on assemblage that explores non-conventional materials and odd juxtapositions, the themes of political aggression and thwarted desire, and the use of language as a visual element. These things are indeed common to the three styles under consideration, but somehow the theory this show expounds isn’t the most compelling thing about it.

What really makes this exhibition worth seeing is the fact that it includes choice works by several excellent artists, many of whom are rarely seen in L.A. At the top of the list is Paul Thek, a woefully neglected American artist who died of AIDS in 1988 at the age of 54 (an in-depth survey of Thek’s work is long overdue). A cranky iconoclast who made massive mixed-media installations (none of which were preserved for posterity, sad to say), Thek combined elements of pop, surrealism and the hippie philosophy of the ‘60s. He’s represented here by an untitled work from 1965 made of wax, paint, shoes and a dead bird--a piece that reads as a rather sad memento of what was by all accounts a difficult and fascinating life.

Also noteworthy is David Mach’s “The Reluctant Bride,” a wacky assemblage comprised of a cheap knock-off of a classical statue of a female nude ensnared in the antlers of a stuffed deer head. This young Scottish sculptor is making a name for himself in Europe for his audacious use of materials (he once built a replica of the Parthenon from old tires), and the witty piece on view here leaves one anxious to see more of his work. The same is true of Annette Messager, a French artist who uses language and writing as central elements of her work. There’s a weird strain of morbidity about Messager’s aesthetic (she once dressed a bunch of dead birds in clothes she’d knit for them), but the piece on view here, “Mes Ouvrages,” suggests her to be skillful manipulator of feminine motifs; needlework--embriodery and knitting--figures in much of her work, including this piece.

The show also includes strong works by Ed and Nancy Kienholz, George Herms, Bruce Nauman, Robert Rauschenberg and the redoubtable Terry Allen.

( 77 Market St. Venice. to Sept. 8) .

Body Work: L.A. Louver’s other space houses an exhibition of drawings by sculptor Peter Shelton. As with his sculpted work, the architecture of the human body is the launching point for Shelton’s drawings which depict shells, skins and garments, vaguely recognizable organic fragments swollen or shrunk to alarming dimensions, and fantastic architecture.

Like Bruce Nauman (who’s clearly been a major influence on Shelton), Shelton is fascinated by the phenomenology of physical forms in space, however, he also has a taste for the surreal. He expresses it here in drawings of bizarre architectural forms that would look at home in the rustic, hallucinatory world of William T. Wiley; the whimsy that lurks at the edges of all Shelton’s work takes center stage in drawings like “kettlehouse,” which depicts a strange wooden Quonset hut perched atop a spherical structure.

Executed in graphite on Mylar, Shelton’s drawings are strongly reminiscent of Jasper Johns; like Johns, his touch is crisp and formal, yet moist. Shelton has a beautifully fluid way of drawing and his images have a loose sensuality that’s at odds with the inexplicably horrific forms he draws.

(55 N. Venice Blvd.)

Almarez Remembered: When Carlos Almarez died last December of AIDS, Los Angeles lost one of its most eloquent observers. Almarez loved and understood the poetry of this city remarkably well, and as a Chicano born in Mexico City and raised in L.A., he had a special feeling for its history. The hodgepodge of influences percolating in and around L.A. came together beautifully in Almarez’s work, which combined Catholic and Hispanic motifs, references to European art, the iconography of low-rider car culture, Disney graphics, folk art and Mexican muralist techniques. Almarez synthesized these disparate threads into an intensely expressive style that exploded with fiery color and movement.

A survey of 22 years of Almarez’s works on paper on view at the Jan Turner Gallery through Sept. 15 offers a concise view of his career. Including ink and graphite drawings, watercolors, monoprints and pastels, this comprehensive show touches on all the major stylistic shifts he experienced.

Almarez first came into prominence in the early ‘70s as a muralist and founding member of Los Four, an aggressive collective of political artists whose work centered on the politics of Latino culture. Almarez’s drawings from this early period vary quite a bit. A portrait titled “Aviator,” for instance, is executed in a crude folk-art style that almost looks like outsider art, while other drawings involving flying saucers, Indian teepees, hearts pierced with daggers and Crayola colors are done in a faux naive child-art style. The early ‘70s also found Almarez executing spare, Picassoesque line drawings, and bright, buoyant portraits of L.A. street life. Like most young artists do, Almarez was obviously testing out various styles in search of his own.

The look of Almarez’s work continued to vary a good deal throughout his career, however, the feeling of his work did take consistent form fairly early on; from the start, a powerful anger churned through his images. Exploding with violence and sexuality (which he often depicted as inseparable), his work is permeated with the sense of the individual overwhelmed by the cacophonous symphony of life around him. Conjuring an apocalyptic realm of car crashes, fires and mad dogs, Almarez takes us into a place of frightening beauty evocative of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Though much of Almarez’s work is informed with the cool whimsy of the Pushpin Graphics style, and several of his drawings have a faint whiff of the wistful melancholy of Edward Hopper, his images invariably have the potential of erupting into a fevered dream.

The anger that roared through Almarez’s work never really went away; rather, it seemed to evolve into confusion and regret, and his final works found him turning to the themes of sin and redemption. The incandescent neon colors he favored throughout his career came to be muted, and where he once jam packed the picture plane with colors and forms, he simplified his composition considerably. His final drawings are less crowded and chaotic, and for the first time, the clean white field of the paper shines through.

(8000 Melrose Ave).