ART REVIEW : Sight, Insight Interplay in ‘Emblazoned Ciphers’

Light dances with shadow in “Emblazoned Ciphers of the Visible,” a crisp, stimulating 10-artist exhibition at Cal State Los Angeles. The subtle play of illumination--as it seeps through semi-translucent surfaces, ricochets off shiny sheets of metal, emits from video monitors and pours out of landscape paintings--charges the sparse installation with a palpable, sometimes sexy flow of energy.

Like other types of seduction, the show requires its viewers to go slowly, savor nuances and yield to a stop-and-go rhythm of incrementally heightened stakes. The more attention you give to these paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos and installations, the more you get from them.

After a while, sight and insight intertwine. You begin to look at yourself looking at things. This self-reflective vision is exactly what curators Sabina Ott, Michael Anderson and Ed Forde intend. They invite us to transform our perceptions from passive, automatic reactions to self-conscious explorations of the connections between seeing and knowing, sensing and thinking.

Linda Roush-Hudson’s sand-blasted plexiglass window-covers diffuse harsh sunlight into a bath of supple, untouchable color. Like a rainbow, her art is most present from a distance. Likewise, Karen Keene’s captivating paintings look like cubes of frozen light whose softness and warmth intensify their mystery. Michael Norton’s intimate egg tempera frescoes of abstract landscapes transport us well beyond this century to an otherworldly space of exquisite beauty.

Claudia Matzko’s grid of more than 3,000 map tacks lit from one side stands out as the exhibition’s cool tour de force. Like thousands of miniature lunar eclipses, the heads of the pins gradually disappear into the shadow at the center of wall. Although your mind knows they’re there--because you’ve seen them from other angles--your eyes cannot detect them.

Trying to determine precisely where they appear to dissolve into the wall results in a maddening and tantalizing sensation that is both bodily and cerebral. Matzko, a master at gracefully charting the infinitesimal differences between objects and our experiences of them, updates the ancient theological debate about how many angels are able to dance on the head of a pin. Her work provides mesmerizing evidence that mundane materials are all that is necessary to give us a glimpse of infinity, and our place in it.

* Cal State Los Angeles, 5151 State University Drive, (213) 343-4023, through Oct. 28. Closed Sunday and Monday.