ART REVIEW : Sanchez’s Obsessiveness Ultimately Boring

Obsession is rarely dull, and Pauline Stella Sanchez is nothing if not obsessed. At Acme Gallery she displays hundreds of pink, watercolor doodles on uniformly sized sheets of white paper. These circle the space, extending from one room to the next. On at least one occasion they climb up the wall, like an insanely prolific vine.

The doodles themselves ape this looping trajectory. They consist of loose circles, tense coils, biomorphic curves and stray dots. Their pinkness makes them unrepentantly feminine. So do the forms their spiraling lines conjure: lush flowers, flamboyant plastic jewelry, parasols, doilies, even scrambling French poodles.

This installation is consistent with the artist’s earlier work, in which the art object doesn’t just sit there--it madly begets yet more art objects. For Sanchez, there is never a pregnant pause, just unceasing pregnancies. Her comically fevered industry is giddy, hypnotic and dramatic--and also cagey and disciplined, insofar as it partakes of a 1970s-style systems aesthetic.

And yet, the whole thing winds up being rather boring. Obsession assumes a compulsion to repeat, and herein lies the rub: Sanchez hasn’t managed to evade monotony.

Here, one is never tempted by anything other than the spectacle, which shouldn’t be underestimated. Sanchez has a good sense of how to orchestrate a multi-part composition. One of the most winning elements is the way the installation holds together visually when seen from the gallery’s front door. Yet things fall apart because the individual drawings seem ultimately like dutiful recitations. They are never seductive enough--at least in bulk--to draw us into this misfired exercise.

* ACME Gallery, 1800-B Berkeley St., Santa Monica, (310) 264-5818, through May 20. Closed Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays.