Art Review : ‘Floored’ Maximizes Minimalist Sculptures

The Lannan Foundation is a peaceful bower for the contemplation of contemporary art. Its gallery is so pristine that human habitation seems almost an affront. That aside, the space does serve to dramatize its content.

In present instance that’s good, since the matter is mainly minimalist sculpture. The form needs to be firmly set off from the hurly-burly of a normal urban environment, lest it be mistaken for scaffolding or a discarded crate. No danger of that here. The show is so exquisitely placed even the distraction of identifying wall labels has been eliminated. Don’t worry. A little map is available at the front desk to sort out the players.

The exhibition, called “Floored,” includes 17 works by a dozen artists all drawn from the foundation’s permanent collection. Several pieces are on view for the first time. Thematically the ensemble echoes an ancient moment in the ‘60s when the art world waxed atwitter over sculpture coming down from its pedestal and standing right smack on the floor with the rest of us. This was taken as symbolic of the egalitarian spirit of the epoch. Art was for everybody.

The oldest and likely the finest work here is Isamu Noguchi’s “Figure.” Finished in 1948, it consists of four slender, upright biomorphic shapes interlocked by slotting. Normally the material for such a work might be a white stone that lends a cool, classical detachment. Here, instead, the artist chose a gray Georgian marble with a curious fuzzy veining. It makes the work look atmospheric, cottony and slightly hallucinatory.

Nearby stands an untitled piece by the German Ulrich Ruckriem. Looking like a block of gray granite encased in slabs of rust-colored stone, its somber monumentality recalls Stonehenge, a place that perfectly conjoins the man-made with the natural.

By contrast, Donald Judd used industrial materials like green Plexiglas and stainless steel to evoke the purist glamour of modernist rationality.

It’s curious how frequently the works on view join apparent dichotomies like the primal and the sophisticated, the rational and the romantic. Jackie Ferrara, for example, is represented by several examples made of thin slabs of cotton batting. Stacked as pyramid, tiered circle or staircase, they could be thinking of ancient temples or modern ones. Probably they are thinking only about themselves, their relation to the ground-plane or extension of a wall surface.

Joel Shapiro is good at that too. He shows three configurations of carved stone spheres resembling good size cantaloupes. They have a way of subtly defining surrounding space, imparting a sense of their weight and creating a consciousness that there is a big difference between one of them alone and several together.

There are pleasant compensations for anyone who finds all that excessively theoretical, elementary or didactic. There’s something likably gooney about Robert Therrien’s little sculpture’s resemblance to a robot snowman. Lynda Benglis shows a great blob of colored polyurethane goop called “Night Sherbet” that’s as refreshing as seeing the baked Alaska spilled on the guest of honor. Kiki Smith seems to have had a good time making 220 spermatozoid cast-glass shapes chase one another around a rubber mat.

Something more heartfelt comes from Eva Hesse’s “Sequel.” It’s just a little pile of husk-like shapes, but it’s as affecting as a poem about autumn. Christopher Wilmarth’s “Susan Walked In” borders on the astonishing. Basically just a right-angle constructivist sculpture of bronze and glass slabs, its use of human scale and unexpected interplay of solid and empty space evokes a muted trumpet solo about a bittersweet love.

* Lannan Foundation, 5401 McConnell Ave., Marina del Rey; through Aug . 13, closed Mondays (310) 306-1004.