ART : Flirting With Meaning of Plastic Plants

In 1989, Vincent Shine made large, pure-form sculptures that alluded to everyday objects like pianos and teapots. They were shifted subtly to avoid becoming a complete representation.

Keep that in mind when looking at his current pieces which are exact, tiny green plant seedlings pinned to the wall or enshrined on tall pedestals. These are representations so perfectly contrived--delicate, thread white roots and all--that it’s only the impossibility of their being real, and the long list of plastics that make up the materials, that knocks them conceptually out of the ring.

Shine’s pieces at the Michael Kohn Gallery in Santa Monica closely mirror nature. Yet dangling on the wall or dancing on myriad roots, their presentation repeatedly demands that the viewer acknowledge the artificiality of the work. This is part of the artist’s tactic for getting the viewer involved in the process of assigning the work its meaning.

Coupled with the paring of identical weeds on the wall so that right and left offer a stereoscopic view of the same “living” object, Shine pushes hard on the futility of observation.

Shine’s choice for faux seedlings isn’t the random decision such innocuous plants might suggest. Duckweed, a sprawling aquatic patch of tiny green leaves and flowers is currently being hailed by environmentalists as an urban water treatment “savior” that can also be used for human and animal food.

Along with Shine’s papyrus sprouts, these plants are symbolically loaded objects closely tied to the human capacity to recognize things as useful. But the underlying irony here, of course, is that appearances can’t be trusted.

Shine may not be trying to be an environmentalist, but this work make’s you think hard about issues of “usefulness,” deforestation and the objectification of nature.