Testing Cross-Fire of Ideas, Forms in ‘Metaphor’

“Metaphor of Function,” the season opener at San Diego State University’s Art Gallery, has touches of humor, terror and transcendence in spite of its cool facade. The show’s contents, as its title suggests, refer to functional objects in non-literal ways. The sculptures’ industrial shapes and surfaces imply utility, while their iconic isolation from the “real” world and their quirky combinations subvert it.

All three artists--James Ford of New York, Jacci Den Hartog of Los Angeles and San Diego’s Kenneth Capps--engage our expectations of function, teasing them, twisting, tickling and threatening until we finally release those hopes for logic and address the work on its own terms, as sculpture, as commentary, as poetry, good or bad.

Ford is the least subversive of the three, but his directness does not preclude eloquence. In his dramatic combinations of materials, Ford instantly evokes the ancient, alchemical process of transforming base metal into gold. He pairs the rough and refined in simple situations that speak of the yearning for transcendence, that leap from the material to the spiritual.

Ford’s “Lab” is set up as a vaguely scientific experiment. Three objects sit atop a rusted work table: a solid bowl of dark metal, a flask of solid, brushed aluminum, and a knife-like wedge of brassy gold. It is a silent still-life, and simple, but suggestive of the alchemical miracle or an act of ritual purification.

His “Mortar and Pestle,” too, alludes to the creation of something precious and rare, but of an organic, mundane origin. Here, the pestle is formed of shiny, cast aluminum, its long handle tapered to a point. It rests in the cavity of a crusty, cast graphite vessel, broken and eroded.

Like Ford’s objects, Den Hartog’s also offer textural surprises. Unlike Ford’s wise, pensive work, however, Den Hartog’s is merely clever. Its surprises are thin and short-lived, and leave no residue of wonder. Her pair of cast rubber pipes, spewing out of a metal mount on the gallery’s entry wall, are playful in a clumsy way. Stacks of inner tubes, one cast in white plaster, the other in dark fiberglass, offer moments of whimsy, too, but little more.

Far more engrossing is Capps’ installation, “Metered Atmosphere,” his single, powerful contribution to the SDSU show. Standing within the large, rectangular room feels akin to being inside the guts of a machine that drones, hums, ticks and buzzes, but gives no clue of the purpose behind the chorus. In addition to its inherent mystery, the space also stirs sensations of danger, oppression and vulnerability.

Along the room’s two long walls at a height of more than six feet, Capps has mounted rows of metal cylinders. Four cylinders on each wall are connected by a metal pipe, and joined to their counterparts on the facing wall by what appears to be copper wire. Just slightly overhead, the entire apparatus fills the air with a tense buzzing that shifts and builds, then ceases before repeating.

The title of the installation alludes to a form of testing, of monitoring the quality of the space, but the functional claim is false. Nothing is measured in this room but the viewer’s own patience and curiosity, which, if extended far enough, can concoct a troubling scenario to match the physical unease.

Adding to the unsettling sensations caused by the noise in the room, Capps has also mounted two metal silhouettes of human torsos on the shorter walls.

Capps’ subterranean stage for technological, criminal intrigue gives an ominous edge to “Metaphor of Function.” The installation, like the show itself, puts the viewer in a cross fire of ideas and forms, at the juncture where the human spirit meets industrial efficiency and submits to all of its dangers, indulgences and promising possibilities.

The show continues through Sept. 26.