ART REVIEWS : Beautiful Photographs of a Beautiful World

Like the more interesting Conceptual artists of the 1970s, Post-Conceptualist Christopher Williams refuses to acknowledge a mind-body split. His art addresses the senses, as well as the part of the brain that questions cultural codes, layered references, catalogues of inconsistencies and ideologies--recalcitrant and otherwise.

At Margo Leavin Gallery, a new body of work titled “For Example: Die Welt ist Schon (Revision No. 3)” looks like a suite of photographs by a flighty perfectionist. There are heavily saturated color portraits of Japanese women; crisp architectural studies of the headquarters of L.A.’s Department of Water and Power and straight images of museum collectibles that are transformed into exquisite, surreal icons before our eyes.

Though the title of the exhibition asserts that “the world is beautiful,” Williams’ work is not strictly about beauty. It is rather about how beauty is constructed by the aestheticizing glance of the camera.

Williams borrows his title from a 1928 book of photographs by Albert Renger-Patzsch and August Sander, in which those German Modernists attempted to document all the beautiful things of this world (plants, animals, landscapes, buildings, etc.). In restaging this Utopian, if Sisyphean, project, he frames the politics of Modernism.

Williams demonstrates how the styles and genres of Modernist photography create various classes of objects and subjects. Ethnographic photography turns artifacts into curiosities; architectural photography transforms living spaces into ruins; nature photography evacuates the natural. The result is a world not merely beautiful, but regulated: processed, labeled, colonized and contained.

The political critique implicit here has been explicit in Williams’ earlier work, most notably in “From Angola to Vietnam” and “Supplement.” Postmodern obliqueness is deployed to challenge Modernist claims of objectivity.

However, in the end we are left precisely where we started, with a disparate group of beautiful photographs. This isn’t a bad place to be, but neither is it the place where Williams’ art is most important.

* Margo Leavin Gallery, 812 N. Robertson Blvd., (310) 273-0603, through July 9. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Shackelford’s Synthesis: In his first one-person exhibition at Ace Contemporary Exhibitions, Stephen Shackelford reveals not only a good working knowledge of recent art history but an impressive synthetic imagination.

Stirred into one, big, aesthetic melting pot is a less bombastic take on Dennis Oppenheim’s mechanized operatics, a more playful reading of David Ireland’s Duchampian ethics, a diluted version of Robert Morris’ hard-line threats and a satirical barb at Matthew Barney’s absurdist athletics.

The latter shows up in “Fly Chair,” a bright orange chair suspended from the ceiling’s rafters by a network of bungee cords, with a large propeller bringing up the rear and a motor crafted from a weed whacker in the front. During performances, Shackelford pilots this low-tech, anti-futuristic, but apparently efficient vehicle. During the exhibition, it remains empty, less an index of the artist’s physical derring-do than a mark of his smart-alecky nature.

If this piece is still, nothing else in the room is. Everywhere are buzzes, whizzes and blasts.

In one corner an amplifier magnifies the sound of an electric guitar repeatedly striking the wall, in a surprisingly rhythmic kind of head-banging. Elsewhere, a punching bag spins in circles, its tinker-toy propeller moving so quickly it’s as dangerous as a buzzsaw. Box springs and a clean, white pillow look more inviting, but as soon as your head touches the pillow, heavy-metal music blares.

Like second-prize winners at a science fair or elegant solutions to non-problems, Shackelford’s devices are provocative but somewhat beside the point.

Not so a large installation in which a silent, pitch-black room is suddenly transformed into a firefly-filled night sky. The viewer’s body triggers a motion sensor that causes a legion of mechanized, buzzing objects to swarm overhead. In turn, Shackelford triggers in us a dramatic shift in perception, as well as the vertigo we crave from science, technology and (come to think of it) art.

* Ace Contemporary Exhibitions, 5514 Wilshire Blvd., (213) 935- 4411, through July 28. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Stouthearted Men: What is it to be a man?

This is the question Daniel Kaufman asked 75 men, aged 11 to 92, including Guardian Angels, retired lumberjacks, attorneys, dry cleaners, gang members and Zen priests. Their handwritten statements, along with photographic self-portraits each shot with the aid of Kaufman and a 30-foot cable-release cord, are now on view at Newspace.

It is interesting that Kaufman insists each subject control his own portrait, choosing the context, props, lighting, etc. Control is, of course, among the most stereotypical of masculine attributes.

“Being a man, to me, means being in control of my life . . . sometimes of other people’s lives,” notes one individual clad in black leather and studs. More interesting, however, is that, despite everything, so few of these men actually seem to be in control.

One, who identifies himself as “proud and gay,” photographs himself in his closet. Another, a fireman pictured in uniform clutching a squirting hose, notes that masculinity is “showered” on men, seemingly unaware of the irony. An up-and-coming corporate type with a fat cigar between his teeth writes that “a man is firm; a woman is soft.” Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar--but not here.

Though the so-called men’s movement represents a valid interest in redefining (or at least interrogating) masculinity, Kaufman’s survey doesn’t go very far in that direction. On the whole, his is a pedestrian effort whose sum never adds up to more than its individual parts.

This may be because Kaufman himself seems to be the only man involved who is interested in ceding control. For the artist, however, this is a dangerous position to take. Allowing 75 different people to have a voice may be exemplary, especially in light of the myth of the solitary, masculine artist-genius. Here it results in little more than a lot of noise.

* Newspace Gallery, 5241 Melrose Ave., (213) 469-9353, through July 2. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Splashy Sarcasm: Does spirituality exist in a world where pilgrims trek to Las Vegas as if it were Mecca? What might a consumerist mandala look like? When ignorance masquerades as populism, who benefits?

In new work at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Karen Carson asks serious questions, though her tongue is planted so firmly in her cheek that they occasionally come out garbled.

With signage that looks as though it were picked up ready-made at the hardware store, lettering as easy to read as names on the shirts of gas station attendants and graphic images that might have been snatched off pinball and slot machines, Carson’s large, vinyl banners play at a familiar, down-market vernacular. Less plebeian are the messages her splashy standards spell out, which concern birth and death, the body and the soul, the self and the other.

Translated into either/or propositions, these mimic the structure of Western metaphysics, the format of a late capitalist opinion poll, the appeal of fundamentalist religion and the all-or-nothing mentality of a gambler. Such juxtapositions are intriguing, though their power is muted by a marked sarcasm.

This strategy usually works for Carson, but here her tendency to play it for laughs interferes with larger plans, suggesting that this project is not quite finished.

* Rosamund Felsen Gallery, 8525 Santa Monica Blvd., (310) 652- 9172, through July 2. Closed Sundays and Mondays.