ART REVIEW : Two Masters See Purity From Different Perspectives

Joe Goode and John McCracken each have small solo shows at the L.A. Louver Gallery. The two L.A. masters make art that looks abstract to the eye. The mind sees other things. Both artists contemplate the idea of purity.

Purity is supposed to be about the absence of complexity. Few things appear simpler than McCracken’s sculpture. He still makes rectilinear solids. There are 10 of them this time. Each hangs horizontally on the wall about chin high, vaguely resembling a shelf. But they are too thick and too shallow to store things, so what are they doing there? They seem very solid and strong, almost extruded from the wall like the ends of heavy beams hidden behind the dry wall. Maybe they’re holding up the building.

But there is something else. Each work is painted one color, polished to such a smooth sheen that it picks up reflections from the surroundings. Depending on the hue, light softens the edges and surfaces of pieces differently. The black “Multiplex” appears hollow in the center. The red “Starlight” seems to have no top. Does the blue “Horizon” glow from within? They appear to float, as if levitated.

For all its Gregorian starkness, McCracken’s sculpture seems to entertain the notion that it is impossible to make anything so plain-spoken that it does not, in the end, evoke its opposite.

Goode dwells on the notion of purity defiled. Four “Pollution Paintings” at L.A. Louver set a theme that is also carried on in a series of some 30 tiny collages on view across the street at Bobbie Greenfield Gallery.

These days everybody is terrified of impurity. Lungs are attacked by smoke and fumes. Viruses gnaw at immune systems. Politicians are on the take.

Goode makes clear he is thinking of environmental pollution in titles like “Bangkok” and “Bucharest.” What he has to say about it may surprise certain pristine viewers.

A poisoned ecology may be killing us, but it sure is pretty.

Everybody with eyes has noticed how particularly noxious days can produce sunsets of eerie beauty. During riot and conflagration Angelenos stay glued to the TV because, truth to tell, the visual spectacle of disaster is hypnotic.

Goode has never painted with more subtle and biting felicity. In “Miskolc” and “Laguna Beach” strange blob shapes float on air like liquid about to turn to ash.

There is too much philosophical intelligence and aesthetic detachment in these works to take them for social commentary. If we suspect that Goode has somehow matured to a long Asian view of things, he’s happy to confirm it. His exquisite small collages are signed with his name in English and then translated into a Japanese chop mark.

* L.A. Louver, 77 Market St., Venice, through Feb. 5, (310) 822-4955. Bobbie Greenfield Gallery, 74 Market St., Venice, through Feb. 15, (310) 392-1771.