Art Reviews : Narratives Are Highlight of ‘Black Maria’

Donald Krieger’s sprawling, four-gallery installation at the Santa Monica Museum of Art begins with cogent ideas about film technology but loses its focus and energy well before you finish listening to its soundtracks, watching its projections, bending over its vitrines, wandering around its sets and reading its long, explanatory wall labels.

These compact narratives are the best part of Krieger’s ambitious, unresolved work, titled “Black Maria” after the first motion picture studio, invented by Thomas Edison. They convey interesting anecdotes about Edison’s claustrophobic, poorly ventilated chamber, which sat on curved tracks that allowed it to follow the sun’s path. The labels also hint at Krieger’s ideas about the intoxicating, sometimes nefarious, uses to which Disney and Warhol put Edison’s supremely deceitful invention.

The other objects and props the artist employs don’t work as well. His tables of fake scientific equipment, home-movie screens, steel chains, reels of film and rolls of tin foil make it clear that Warhol’s Factory or Disney’s fantasies are being referred to, but the props don’t communicate anything more specific or original.

One problem with Krieger’s installation is that it doesn’t seem to know what it wants to say. Another is that the argument it struggles to articulate might be better suited to a different medium, such as an essay or a book--formats that resemble greatly expanded wall labels.

* Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2437 Main St., Santa Monica, (310) 399-0433, through Jan. 15. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

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Minimal Collages: Sarah Seager’s exhibition at 1301 Gallery combines some of the worst aspects of public art with a style of Conceptualism that was once prominent in local art schools but now might best be called “L.A. Laziness.”

Her show consists of nine nicely framed sheets of vellum, on each of which she has pasted a phrase or two clipped from clothing catalogues and museum brochures. A few hastily cut rectangles of colored paper almost always decorate Seager’s slight, minimally oriented collages, giving them the appearance of low-budget graphic designs that lack inspiration.

As is common to third- or fourth-generation Conceptualism, the exhibition checklist is an essential component of the show. It conveys more information than all the works combined, letting viewers know that they’re not looking at real works of art, but proposals for works of art.

Money is all that is needed for Seager to complete her pieces. When a collector selects a proposal he or she would like to see realized, the artist enters into a discussion to determine the details of the work’s final form.

Three involve additional shopping, for a dragon-print scarf, a leather jacket or a pair of sarong pants. Two proposals promise posters. One collage is to be accompanied by an as-yet-unpublished book. Another is a crude contract stipulating that a band play a record’s worth of songs from a defunct punk group’s repertoire.

By purchasing Seager’s proposals, collectors finance her projects. As instant benefactors, they are entitled to some input into relevant decisions. In consultation with the artist, they negotiate the logistics of whatever deals they cut, deciding, for example, on the sizes and styles of the clothing, whether these items are to be worn or hung on the wall like paintings, or mounted on pedestals like sculpture.

Artist and collector thus mimic the activities of city committees and boards of directors who approve cultural projects intended for public consumption. Like much publicly funded art--which, these days, must legitimize itself as community-building, educational outreach or social welfare--Seager’s collages never claim to be autonomous, self-sustaining works. They’re merely tokens of social services performed elsewhere.

This brand of art-as-promissory-note is the result of an undying sense of entitlement, combined with a lack of faith in the institutions meant to deliver these privileges. Seager’s willingness to give up on art-making in favor of proposal-writing and compromise replays, in the privacy of the artist’s studio, what has already happened in the public sector. Tragedy returns as farce.

* 1301 Gallery, 1301 Franklin St., 1, Santa Monica, (310) 828-9133, through Dec. 23. Closed Sundays through Wednesdays.