Art Review : Kunishima’s Points Are Dully Noted

Seiji Kunishima seems to have been around forever, quietly making sculptures that approvingly are called “timeless” and “meditative.” A group of his small pieces and painted screens from the past decade are at the Fine Arts Gallery at Golden West College through Nov. 11. Frankly, though, it’s hard to get excited about this work.

Of course, a feeling as brash as excitement is not what Kunishima, a Japanese artist now in his late 50s, attempts to convey in his work. His simple stone forms have been viewed as evocative of natural forces, of the dualities of the universe (space and void, flow and stasis, natural and man-made) and of the pleasures of tactile and visual senses working in concert.

The quintessential Kunishima piece involves two forms that mirror and sometimes support one another. In “Nestled Forms ‘87-22,” for example, two similar-looking chunks of Japanese black granite with polished tops fit loosely together. Each clearly rests on its own weight, yet each also “accepts” the intrusion of the neighboring stone, reflecting both the independence and interdependence of natural phenomena.

Kunishima’s sculptures have the highly ordered, slightly cryptic quality of objects in a Japanese garden: A smooth, flat piece of Indian black granite resting on two grooved lengths of American white granite evokes a “suspended pool”; a bronze “twig” rests lightly across two smoothly swelling identical mounds of African black granite.

Granted the works’ lack of tension, which Western viewers tend to expect from art, something else is missing that cannot easily be ascribed to differing cultural perceptions. Although the viewer’s thoughts are necessary to complete the piece (as in most worthy contemporary sculpture), each piece seems to pose the same question and to require the same answer.

*

A style that seemed a fresh way of reinterpreting an age-old view of the world several decades ago has hardened into mannerism. Serenity has turned into blandness; balance and harmony have dissipated into dullness. There is something too obvious, too premeditated in this work. What’s missing is the element of surprise that gives even a Zen koan its wise edge.

Kunishima’s screens reiterate basic natural elements--rocks, land and water--with primary and metallic colors and a simplified system of arcs and straight lines. Pleasant enough as elements of interior design, these works suffer from being flat designs on paper that cannot show off the artist’s feel for three-dimensional shape and palpable surface.

The exhibition also includes a slide show of large scale sculptures made for specific sites.

Kunishima’s commissioned works in Southern California include “Stonework ‘82” on the lawn of the Security Pacific Bank in Brea (on Valencia Avenue between Birch and Nasa streets). The piece, part of the city’s Art in Public Places program, consists of a black boulder bridging two 10-foot-high white granite wedges.

* “Sites, Sculptures, Screens,” through Nov. 11 at Fine Arts Gallery, Golden West College, 15744 Golden West St., Huntington Beach. Hours: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday; 6-9 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Admission: Free. (714) 895-8358.)