Taking a Collective Look at ‘The Sacred and the Profane’

Andres Serrano’s notorious “Piss Christ” is the definitive image of “The Sacred and the Profane,” a large group show at Jan Baum Gallery. Serrano’s purpose--besides the obvious one of producing a spectacular photograph--is to suggest not the disparity, but the proximity of the earthly to the sublime. This is also the point of a cavalcade of paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs and mixed-media assemblages, made by a rather random group of artists ranging from the canonized (Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Mapplethorpe) to the rapidly up-and-coming (Monica Majoli and Dani Tull).

Several of the artists go the literal route--Tim Ebner sculpts a cross out of cement; Lynn Aldrich crafts a piece called “Epiphany” out of a cluster of aluminum crutches; Laura Cooper offers a stairway to heaven, which consists of planks of gold-painted wood, ascending into the gallery’s rafters.

There is indeed a lot of gold paint and gold leaf here; gold is, after all, a handy signifier both of celestial purity and earthly greed. But the two best pieces in the show are as white as snow: Tom Otterness’ “Signs of the Zodiac,” a sculptural Kamasutra enacted by miniature, blanched figures; and Jacci Den Hartog’s “Cosmic Milk Mountain,” an oozing, dripping, yet entirely antiseptic mess, which puts a whole new spin on abjection.

* Jan Baum Gallery, 170 S. La Brea Ave., (213) 932-0170, through July 30. Closed Sundays and Mondays.