ART REVIEW : Differences Prove Complementary : Wexler, Munoz take different tacks, but their work blends well at San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art.

A “basement tinkerer” and a wistful storyteller are sharing the galleries at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. And, strangely enough, the whimsical, pseudo-scientific work of Allan Wexler and the poignant, personal tales of Celia Alvarez Munoz make good neighbors.

Both poke fun at the ground rules of perception. They stretch and test the delicate web of trust, belief and expectation that holds our daily lives together. Neither takes anything learned from the eye--or any other seemingly authoritative source--for granted. And both savor the instability that comes from not being able to define anything absolutely.

Textile artist Ruby Wilkinson’s work is on view here too, but it stands apart from this dialogue. Her detailed tableaux sewn from scraps of fabric are as obsessively crafted as Wexler’s work, and their zoo, farm and storybook scenes are as familiar as Munoz’s themes. But Wilkinson’s work remains on the periphery, for conceptually it is straightforward where Wexler’s and Munoz’s work deals with twists and turns. And physically, it has been installed in a gallery--actually the auditorium lobby--that has no continuity with the others.

In Wexler’s show, “Table/Building/Landscape” (1989-91), an exhaustive array of studies, models and built installations gives good indication of the artist’s obsession with the furnishings of everyday life. An instructor of environmental design at Parsons School of Design in New York, Wexler dissects the acts of sitting and eating with giddy, brainy humor.

He makes tables that are divided into quarters, each segment to be worn, via over-the-shoulder hooks, by one of the four diners. He builds models of tables whose legs remain connected to the trees outside, through underground tubing. And he makes miniature tables that spin like the blades of a blender.

Wexler explains in the show’s accompanying video that his work may not be functional architecture, but it is about function and about architecture. It’s a form of paper architecture, an enterprise free from the demands of logic and engineering, a realm of total experimentation and poetic license.

At times, his work feels surreal, at others purely whimsical and at others, psychologically penetrating. He claims in the video to be interested in designs that encourage people to act together, as a community.

His “One Table Worn by Four People” certainly requires collaboration, and others, too, make tangible the subtle dependencies and shared responsibilities of diners at a table. In one work, four cups of coffee are linked by clear plastic tubing. If one diner were to raise a cup to drink before the others do, the coffee would drain from his cup and cause the others to overflow. A quirky brand of etiquette, to be sure, but it makes its point.

Sheer comedy and gimmickry in the style of M.C. Escher often drown out the intelligence of Wexler’s work, but when they can be seen, the work’s questions about the nature of vision, perception and representation are especially acute.

“Interpretations of a Found Photograph,” for instance, toys effectively with the camera’s credibility. Here, a damaged photograph of a table appears next to two small models of a table, with damage imposed on them to match the photograph. A visual volley between the two interpretations--damaged photograph of an intact table or intact photograph of a damaged table?--makes an incisive point about the malleability of truth.

Munoz’s show also teaches a few lessons about the fluidity of perception, and the ability of one thing to assume contradictory forms and meanings. Her richest work examines the voice of authority and its exploitation--whether well-meaning or not--of the innocence of childhood.

Her “Enlightenment Series,” a set of boxed books from the early 1980s, is represented here by three works, each of which evokes a progression from one state of awareness to another.

In the five framed panels of “Which Came First,” Munoz, whose bilingual upbringing in Texas serves as the source for most of her work, braids together handwritten lines from a childhood English lesson with printed text describing a lesson about how a chicken lays eggs. “Through its mouth,” she is told, but despite some efforts at watching chickens, she is never able to witness that event. With the innocent wisdom of a child, Munoz writes in the last handwritten line that “The chicken lies everyday,” when in truth, it is her teacher who’s guilty of lies.

Another fallacy unfolds in the photographs accompanying this punning tale. In the first frame, five eggs are shown in a row receding in space. In each of the next seven images, the camera angle shifts slightly until the final frame shows the eggs in a row across the page. The illusion that objects of the same size appear smaller when further away is confirmed in the first image and contradicted in the last, which reveals the eggs to truly be of diminishing size. The final photograph, like the teacher’s explanation, is a pat answer, but one that only spurs more questions.

In “Ella y El (Referentes 1),” a wooden, altar-like construction, Munoz layers photographs, text and small found objects to reveal characters. Two Photographs, one of a girl’s red dress adorned with hearts and charms, the other of a boy’s white suit surrounded by knives and skeletons, are backed by panels of fabric, ribbons and small milagros . Inside the altar, two eloquent text panels complete the portrait.

Not all of Munoz’s work progresses as wittily as the works in the “Enlightenment Series” or as poignantly as “Ella y El.” The title work of the show, “El Limite,” has layers of visual and verbal coincidence but remains uncomfortably static. An installation in the form of a giant, two-walled open book, it sets a stage, but never bestows meaning on all of its props.

The overlapping of fact and fiction suggested in the text of “El Limite” recurs in far more compelling forms elsewhere in the show, where Munoz hints of the distinction between lies poured into the trusting, vulnerable minds of children, and those that we willingly subscribe to as adults, such as the lie of photographic veracity.

Munoz usually assumes a tone of primer-like simplicity but her voice is surprisingly complex and engaging. It is the sound of a child’s endearing naivete, filtered through an adult’s clever independence.

All three shows continue at the museum (700 Prospect St.) through June 2.