Flaws and Order : Irvine Exhibit Takes a Close Look at ‘Urge’ to Impose Structure and Its Pros and Cons

Tim Jahns calls it the “ordering urge.”

Not a burger and fries, or a margarita on the rocks. Jahns is talking about Life.

“People have this strong impulse to structure and control their daily lives and impose order on the world,” said Jahns, curator of a new Irvine Fine Arts Center exhibit that examines that drive.

Alarm clocks and date books, traffic laws and maps, architectural blueprints or family trees, even words, are all instruments of the urge, Jahns said. Caprice, of course, can topple the most carefully laid plans, he added, and both realities are explored in “Imperfect Order.”

“I like to think our personal and professional lives are a mix of control and chaos,” said Jahns, who chose works by Barbara McCarren, Tim Hawkinson, Buzz Spector, Carrie Ungerman, Martin Gantman, Erwin Wurm and Nicolas Rule. All are Los Angeles artists, except for Rule, who lives in New York, and Wurm, who is from Australia.

The exhibit comprises four installations and some 37 works, mostly three-dimensional and made of materials as diverse as wasp nests--representing nature’s ordering urge--and vitrines for organizing collectibles. Also, a collaborative piece by Gantman and UCLA physicist-artist Lothar Schmitz deals with chaos theory in physics.

The “urge” has its pros and cons, IFAC education coordinator Jahns said in a recent interview. Keeping daily schedules, for instance, makes our lives “more efficient and less at the mercy of others’ whims or life’s quirks or accidents,” but excessive planning can drain away spontaneity.

McCarren’s installation exemplifies that idea, he said.”Fire Place,” which features an ornamental, plug-in fireplace, alludes to the impulse for “domestic security”--expressed in the way we organize our homes in an effort to keep the unexpected at bay--and the opposing desire to break away from day-to-day sameness, he explained.

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“You get this sense (from the work) that the beauty and comfort and domestic tranquillity we’re trying to bring to our daily lives is both comforting and fake or superficial, like the fireplace, or could be very easily disrupted or fall into chaos.”

Indeed, the juxtaposition of violent disruption and home-sweet-home orderliness permeates one section of the edgy piece made up of small magnifying glasses. The glass is a tool that can be used to learn about the world--a first step in the ordering process--but may also be used as a tool for combustion, Jahns continued.

McCarren has placed 194 small magnifying glasses in front of 2 1/2-by-2 1/2-inch-square photocopied images, arranged in a grid, of recent major fires, such as those in the Los Angeles riots. Some of the images are grisly; one shows someone’s burned feet that have turned ashen white.

Jahns believes the ordering urge becomes completely unconscious, which is partly why he wanted to include Hawkinson’s work.

Some of his pieces incorporate mirrors--in one, viewers see themselves normally as well as upside down. In another, Hawkinson painted dewdrops on the leaves of a fake ficus tree for a trompe l’oeil effect.

“He’s not into pretty pictures that duplicate what the eye sees, but giving us, in modified form, the things we have around us which we’ve become oblivious to,” the curator said.

Jahns had long been oblivious to his own need to structure every waking moment. Then, “all of a sudden, I woke up to fact that there’s this really strong ordering impulse in our lives.” He’s also aware that artists themselves do a kind of “creative ordering”--organizing thoughts, feelings and ideas into artworks--which in this case, he hopes please the eye, not just the intellect.

“Although the work is challenging and very contemporary and loaded with ideas, it’s also very visually stimulating, and there are fun aspects to it.”

“Imperfect Order” continues through Nov. 3 at the Irvine Fine Arts Center, 14321 Yale Ave., Irvine. “To Be Arranged,” a hands-on activity center for adults and children, featuring Rubik’s cubes, building blocks and a wave machine, accompanies the exhibit. Hours: noon to 9 p.m., Monday; 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Friday; 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday; 1 to 5 p.m., Sunday. Free. (714) 552-1018.