ART REVIEW : Lesser-Known Talents Find Themselves in ‘Objects’

At a time when the cultural party line emphasizes “inclusiveness,” economic reality excludes more and more people. California’s unemployment rate nudges toward 10%. The fact mirrors itself in an art scene with a dwindling number of galleries willing to show artists who are young or of lesser repute.

Such dreary facts make “Objects--16 L.A. Sculptors” a praiseworthy effort to do the right thing when it’s easier to do otherwise. On view simultaneously in Pasadena at the Art Center College of Design and the Armory Center for the Arts, it comes with a catalogue which, alas, got carried away being arty. Aside from that, gallery directors Stephen Nowlin and Jay Belloli have done well.

What they have wrought is a cross-section of local talent, most represented by several works apiece, giving the exhibition some density. Participants prove a degree of professional panache that is initially impressive. Objects tend to bigness. That’s always impressive.

Expressive vectors vary, but lean to retaining the public scale art had when it was on a roll, while investing largeness with the private and idiosyncratic feelings of hard-times introspection.

Daniel Wheeler’s “I Like Mom and Mom Likes Me” was built especially for this occasion. A risible and chilling rumination on the endless Oedipal theme, it consists of a wood-frame enclosure covered in brown wrapping paper and pocked with little night lights. As the day dwindles, according to Nowlin, the lights flicker on automatically and give the space a rather cathedral-like aura. All this surrounds a hollow white dress about 12 feet tall festooned with thingamabobs that could be either nurturing breasts or weapons of corporal punishment. Encouraged to peep up mom’s skirt, one sees trailing roots that are unsettling in context.

The work sets the tone for much of the show. Objects look formally abstract but contain enough human error to let in personal quirks, compulsions and obsessions. A bit like a hand-made basketball, this art bounces in funny directions.

It sets out to be form without substance and becomes substance without form. It hovers somewhere between eccentric minimalism and concentric assemblage. David Grant works like a model airplane maker stretching fabric over ribbed frames. He starts to make a formal hemisphere and the thing sprouts a tail like a mermaid. When William Outcault seemingly tries to make a purely formalist sculpture he winds up fixated on some science-fiction fantasy. When Lilla LoCurto asserts a social protest against war in “Meat Bombs,” it flips over into something private and Freudian.

MacRae Wylde’s work tells us up front it has a thing about a local newspaper in “L.A. Times Sphere.” It consists of some 20 street-corner coin-slot vendors cantilevered from a central core. Automatically humorous in its funky allusion to a space satellite, it remains a private joke.

There are exceptions. Katsuhisa Sakai’s wood structures approach the condition of pure aesthetic objects and are lovely as such. Tim Alexander is the closest thing here to a figurative sculptor. His giant “Chess Set” leaves no doubt about his sense of apocalypse and a society slumping into neo-Barbarism.

Many of the odd expressive edges of this art have been absorbed from the confusions of a changing world. Many more come from the fact that most of these artists are on the young side and still in a state of self-discovery. It’s just axiomatic that such artists create pastiches of admired heroes and come up with results that lack a necessary sense of inevitability. That’s the quality that says, “Nothing about this needs fixing. It is complete and clear.”

Dunnieghe Slawson gets very close in her ferociously visceral fetishes that successfully hybridize Bruce Conner and Louise Bourgeois. Bruce Wallin and John O’Brien also make work that’s together.

Steve Appleton offers a ceiling-suspended monolith made of rusted industrial fire-doors formed into a kind of hinged doughnut shape. It’s imposing but the poetry of the parts doesn’t rhyme. Barbara Benish offers two big pieces that approach the condition of magical opulence but she doesn’t push them far enough. Larissa Wilson’s work is a bit over-designed, Yolande McKay’s a tad diffuse, Wendy Adest’s a hair thin, and Liz Young’s a trifle restrained.

Those who don’t seem to make the cut here are not necessarily less talented, just in need of more time to flesh out larger ambition, distill the essence of their gifts, forget what they learned in school, or find themselves in a show more compatible with their gifts.

No matter how rough the world is, the demands of art remain obdurate. They must. The competition with reality is savage. Even the Mona Lisa will pale if a charming kitten gambols into the gallery. * Through Dec. 23 at Art Center College of Design, 1700 Lida St., (818) 584-5144, and Armory Center for the Arts, 145 N. Raymond, (818) 792-5101, both in Pasadena. Galleries closed on Monday.