ART : ‘Sculptural Innuendos’ Is a Hodgepodge of Odd Gallery-Mates : A grab bag of traditional and contemporary viewpoints is represented in a show that suffers from curatorial vagueness.

There is some wonderfully weird and witty stuff going on in Los Angeles studios these days, but we rarely get to see it in Orange County. And when we do, it tends to be presented without a clearly demonstrated understanding of its meaning and value.

I don’t mean to be churlish about “Sculptural Innuendos” at the Security Pacific Gallery in Costa Mesa (to Dec. 28). The exhibit does introduce some promising work by young artists who communicate through irony and deadpan humor. But such a grab bag of traditional and contemporary viewpoints is represented (as well as such different levels of achievement) that the show doesn’t seem to reflect a specific curatorial vision. What gives?

In his exhibition notes (in these recessionary days, the gallery has abandoned its slick catalogues for a one-sheet guide), curator Mark Johnstone remarks that much new sculpture addresses “timely issues of social, political, economic, environmental and human awareness.”

Well, yeah. But what separates a fresh new approach from a worn-out or muddled approach is how these issues are addressed. Johnstone explains that the sculptures in the show incorporate “autonomy of forms” and “a thoughtful use of space” as well as “a scintillating depth and range of content.” These terms, however, could be used to describe just about any group of sculptures created during the past 40 years.

So what does distinguish the new sensibility in sculpture? In part, a willingness to deal in small, bizarre facts and peculiar appearances--an interest in things that frankly don’t add up or look bewilderingly ordinary (crass, dumb or pathetic).

Jacci Den Hartog’s recent pieces reflect a circus theme. “Untitled (6 Hacked Trunks)” consists of six plaster elephant trunks--just the trunks, no elephants. Identical except for their varied shades of gray paint, the trunks are arranged in a circle on the floor. In a similar vein, “Untitled (6 Dropped Pants)” is exactly that: the unexpected sight of six identical pairs of drooping pants pooling around six identical pairs of shins and shoes, also arranged in a circle.

Group activity done in a circle connotes a mutual trust, a complicity. Replacing the whole elephants with their trunks creates a bizarre image, as if even wanton destruction couldn’t destroy the elephants’ bond. But who are the fragmentary figures immobilized by their fallen pants? Are they clowns engaging in invisible sex play? Are they victims or victimizers?

It’s hard to say. Den Hartog has made work that clearly protests the use of ivory from elephant tusks for jewelry, but her meaning here seems broader and more elusive. She also has a way of playing with bits and pieces of recent art history in her work, and in these pieces she gives the ‘70s notion of serial imagery (identical, minimal, manufactured units) a subversively warm and fuzzy--but also macabre and potentially lewd--twist. The monitor showing Den Hartog’s video, “Spinning Foot,” is balanced on a drum in the center of a circle of cutout metal elephants in cages. The brief video itself focuses on the split second of a circus elephant’s spotlighted “spinning” trick. We see only a flash of light, and then the movement of the creature’s rear foot as it regains its balance.

By highlighting a small, essentially invisible moment of show-biz glory, the artist seems to be remarking on the all-important relativity of viewpoint (blink, and you may miss somebody’s big moment) and perhaps also on the repetitious, routine nature of performance and the garnering of public attention.

Lauren Lesko’s work tends to be much more cut-and-dried--sometimes too much so. A favorite topic of hers is how gender identity is established and sustained by cultural forces. In “Femininity-Lecture XXXIII,” a swath of gold-painted wall, adorned with an elaborate braided gold tassel and coupled with a footstool sheathed in gold chiffon, is juxtaposed with a written text. This is the “femininity lecture” of the title, credited to Sigmund Freud. It is printed backward--perhaps to ensure our studied attention, or to indicate the backward-thinking nature of the text.

Women “have made few contributions to the discoveries and inventions in the history of civilization,” the father of psychoanalysis wrote. He did, however, find one novel set of techniques created by women--braiding and weaving--and surmised that they may account for “the growth of the pubic hair that conceals the genitals.” In retaliation, it seems, Lesko has appropriated gold, the ultimate symbol of power, to celebrate women’s supposed sole avenue of creativity in a way that theatrically flaunts a decorative object that is the product of intricate handiwork.

Nancy Liebenson-Rex’s sculptures have no particular agenda, other than looking bright and breezy, and that they do in spades. A selection of her wall pieces (and a too-cute table) from recent years shows the evolution of her visual ideas.

The pieces from the late ‘80s, like “Life Is a Game of Chess,” incorporate tilting planes of colorful, semitransparent nylon slung on lazy triangular steel rods (cheerfully reminiscent of lawn chairs and awnings) along with wire “scribbles” distributed in a charmingly spacey way on the wall. Recent work, like “Pyewacket,” abandons the nylon shapes for a more diffuse look. Unraveling wire bundles, loping scribbles, and mildly rambunctious doodles poking into empty space--all in high-keyed color--are scattered on the wall in a harmony of wayward parts.

Sarah Tamor began working a few years ago in wire mesh, which has yielded some perky results in small sculptures based on architectural ornaments. But in her two “Icarus” series pieces on view--one, a bulky floor-bound object somewhat reminiscent of Richard Lippold’s “Fire Bird” sculpture for the Performing Arts Center; the other, a hackneyed bird shape hanging from the ceiling--her imagination fails her.

Dexter del Monte’s installation, “Angels and Madmen: Children of Strangers,” appears to be a not-quite-resolved effort at conveying the persistence of belief in systems that bring no joy or peace. Del Monte quotes from the whiny commentaries of an early 20th-Century quasi-religious figure, Jiddu Krishnamurti, in a text accompanying the piece as well as on a painting that lies on the floor.

The rest of the piece consists of photographs of people of various races and ages, and objects arranged on a shelf above the viewer’s head: dead roses, a heap of earth, a red statue of the Virgin, Chairman Mao’s little red book, a jar filled with something moldy and a bunch of chocolate Kisses.

It’s hard to say what these things might have in common. Perhaps they represent the sort of “concepts” that bedevil the lives of those who believe in them, as Krishnamurti’s own ideologies brought him no escape (as he writes) from envy, anger and boredom. But a sharper edge is needed to bring this piece into focus.

What Kim Cheselka and Phyllis Green are doing in this exhibit is anyone’s guess. Cheselka’s emerging-artist-level installation, “Reading the Water,” consists of a bunch of mixed-media images (coy renditions of landscapes, mostly) on two facing walls, each piece hung above a short flight of steps. The imagery is so uninteresting that the viewer doesn’t feel in the least compelled to eddy back and forth between the two walls (as Johnstone suggests in his note). Green’s large concrete-and-steel organic sculptures contrast texture and shape in polite, time-tested ways that offer none of the unsettling surprises of the brash new wave.

In the end, these works make odd gallery-mates. Even the argument that there is something for everyone (which, mercifully, Johnstone doesn’t make) doesn’t rescue the show--and its meaningless title--from curatorial vagueness.