Installation Conjures Up an Intrigue : Art: New York’s Pamela Keech has evoked a mildly haunting realm in which two characters pursue a courtship as strange as themselves.

Transforming a generic studio space into an environment laden with social and sexual implications is no easy feat, but New York artist Pamela Keech has done just that in a new installation for Sushi. “The Conjurer and the Contortionist,” at 744 G St., Studio 106, is the first of a pair of off-site installations sponsored by the performance and visual art gallery; it evokes a curious, mildly haunting realm, a world from the distant past whose values are foreign if not alien.

Though the installation and its slim, accompanying catalogue feel a bit thin in places, both offer the kind of brief intrigue one would expect from a short story. The narrative is barely suggested, not complete, and the characters only cryptically defined, but the atmosphere is ripe with suggestion.

To enter the installation, one must stoop slightly and pass through a rack of old coats. A small storage room follows, holding a broken window, a pair of boots and another rack of old clothes, which serves as entry archway to the next room. This long, narrow space, bathed in yellow light, contains a scattering of furniture and paraphernalia that feels mildly disarming on its own and becomes even more so when regarded as illustration for Keech’s tale printed in the catalogue.

Keech’s story joins two odd characters, Dr. Christian Lust, a stony, well-respected man, “a scholar, not a doer,” and Carnation D. Blood, a seductress who could bend her body into the shape of a table and chair, and, at age 17, “bend a man’s will however she pleased.”

Dr. Lust, the conjurer, and Blood, the contortionist, pursue a courtship as distinctive as they are, loaded with portentous signs and signals, such as a bluebird, sent by Blood as a gift to Lust. Following her directions, Lust spends two days with the bird, and, on the third day, the bird splits open, spewing letters that Blood has fed it and which are to be read as an omen that Lust and Blood are meant to be united.

In the second long, narrow room of the installation, a rusted, twisted bird cage traps a fetish of feathers, which hang directly over a dusting of cut-out alphabet letters on the floor below. Little else in the installation relates so concretely to Keech’s tale, but echoes between the written and visual abound. Black satin stuffed forms hint at Blood’s talents as a contortionist; the shapes come to a close with tassels that allude to her tightly curled ringlets.

Further reflecting the couple’s perverse interests are a small, headless stuffed doll confined to a wood panel by a web of thread, an old dressmaker’s form wearing a blouse with threaded needles dangling from its chest and shoulder, various forked tools, a hanging pulley, and books on Satan and sexual physiology. At the installation’s exit, just past a delicate, diaphanous lace-covered window, hang a harness and a woman’s straw hat--the peculiar pairing serving as the perfect punctuation for the strange activities and interests suggested within.

Keech’s rooms are full of clues and rich with mood. The second room’s attic-like rafters and paned windows suggest a private space for the highly personal pleasures of Dr. Lust and Ms. Blood. Yet such details as a shelf of antique bottles and a compartment of shells and shoes lend an air of innocence to this Victorian cabinet of curiosities. Not all is amiss here, just enough to set the stage for the provocative period piece of Keech’s imagination.

Keech’s installation will be followed in February by another off-site project, this one by an Arkansas artist to be shown in a space yet to be determined. Both installations were funded by the Pasadena-based Flintridge Foundation. The off-site program, conceived by Sushi’s visual arts coordinator, Jason Tannen, is a fresh, welcome expansion of Sushi’s visual arts offerings.

On site at Sushi, two other artists are showing their work concurrently. Jennifer Douglass, an Idaho-based artist, presents several large charcoal and gesso works with the physical presence of paintings and the unresolved sketchiness of drawings. Women and wolves confront each other in miasmatic flurries of black and white brush strokes, barbed atmospheres of fury and chaos. The tempo of Douglass’ strokes yields as much disquiet as the images themselves, often to the point of overwhelming the figurative scenes with amorphous symbols of tension. A sense of danger emanates from these works, but it is diffused by Douglass’s own exhausted, overworked efforts.

Lee Boroson’s three constructions feel facile and harmless. Unsightly, ungainly and unsatisfying works, these installations are technically imaginative and conceptually dead. In each work by the local artist, water runs through hoses and out the holes of punctured footballs, a dead armadillo or a duck decoy. Mixing pseudo-science and juvenile humor, Boroson ends up with very, very little beyond indulgent experimentation.

“The Conjurer and the Contortionist” can be seen at 744 G St., Studio 106. Works by Boroson and Douglass are on view at Sushi, 852 8th Ave. Both shows remain on view through Dec. 14. Hours for both the gallery and the off-site installation are Friday and Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. by appointment (235-8466).

CRITIC’S CHOICE: TRIBAL ART OF INDONESIA

“Hornbills and the Sacred Dragon” opened at the San Diego Museum of Man nearly six months ago, but it remains one of the freshest shows in town. It introduces the tribal art of Indonesia through a fascinating array of soulful and symbolic objects.

Architectural ornamentation, garments, fetishes, jewelry and even sleeping mats all exhibit a marvelous extremity of design so foreign in our own streamlined, throwaway culture. These objects embody traditions and continuity in remarkably rich ways. This is a show to be returned to and inspired by before it closes next March.