ART REVIEWS : Unfilled Fantasy of Democratic Inclusiveness

The “1995 Los Angeles Juried Exhibition” is no more or less depressing than any other show made up of 150 paintings, sculptures, assemblages and works on paper selected by a committee of curators who reviewed thousands of 35-millimeter slides by 1,300 artists foolish (or desperate) enough to answer the city-sponsored call for entries.

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t any interesting works here, just to emphasize that the standouts get lost amid the abundance of mediocre pieces.

Visiting the three venues where the sprawling, misguided exhibition is installed--the Watts Towers Arts Center, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and the Junior Arts Center (both at Barnsdall Art Park)--leaves one with the conviction that contemporary art is not at all suited to the type of competition and presentation common to county fairs.

At county fairs, established standards and accepted categories exist. Although personal taste plays an important, often unpredictable role, competitors and judges generally agree that the most beautifully proportioned pig, the most masterfully knitted sweater and the most delicious slice of apple pie should win blue ribbons.

Such agreement is rarely found among contemporary artists and viewers, most of whom have wildly divergent ideas about art’s purpose and function, as well as contentious disagreements over specific successes and failures.

The absence of shared conventions is evident in the arbitrariness of the categories that make up the “1995 Los Angeles Juried Exhibition.” Many works fit comfortably in two or more sections. It appears that curators Nancy Doll, Howard Fox and Leonard Simon allowed each entrant to select the slot in which they’d compete.

This indecisiveness characterizes many juried exhibitions, especially those organized by committee. It’s a type of hands-off wishy-washiness that has its basis in a dubious notion of democratic openness.

Juried shows are valuable, or so the argument goes, because they allow artists to bypass commercial galleries and permit viewers to see works that otherwise might never be exhibited. Such shows are more prestigious than open exhibitions because every object in them has met with the approval of one or more art professionals.

The problem with the “1995 Los Angeles Juried Exhibition” is that it’s not selective enough. Its fantasy of democratic inclusiveness prevents a compelling show from taking place. Put bluntly, charity outreach and curatorial responsibility don’t mix very well.

To organize an exhibition is to make works converse with one another, to add up to a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Part of the pleasure of viewing a group show is following the curator’s thought process, watching an argument unfold among independently engaging objects.

This almost happens in the “Works on Paper” component of the show, at the Watts Towers Arts Center. Photographs of actual sites in California, New York and Nevada by Ginny Brush, Patricia Lemke, Jill Van Hoogenstyn and Roy Yoshioka make the real world appear to be artificially staged. These captivating pictures raise questions about art’s place in life. They also pinpoint the intersection between the show’s dual impulses: toward gripping, point-blank realism and outlandishly theatrical fakery.

As a whole, however, the show leaves viewers with an exhausting laundry list of works, asking the same uninteresting questions over and over again: Why was this one included? How does it relate to the others?

The answers are almost always: Can’t tell and it doesn’t.

Even so, Daniel Aksten’s supercharged Pattern-and-Decoration paintings, Kerry Kugelman’s fusion of Noland-style targets and giddy cartoons, and Norma Squires’ multipanel abstraction breathe some vitality into the exhibition.

Given the show’s structure, the jurors couldn’t pursue their personal visions or consistently explore substantial ideas. As a result, the “1995 Los Angeles Juried Exhibition” represents the worst sort of institutional sanction: a hollow stamp-of-approval that doesn’t put forth an argument but merely suggests that art’s value is instantly enhanced by being in a gallery. That the best artists rarely apply for juried exhibitions reveals that these show are more like lotteries with paltry prizes than endeavors with serious ambitions.

* Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and Junior Arts Center Gallery, Barnsdall Art Park, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., (213) 485-4581; Watts Towers Arts Center, 1727 E. 107th St., (213) 847-4646, through July 22. Closed Mondays.

*

Found Metal: Splashy, dynamic and lyrical, Tony Berlant’s 20 idiosyncratic images at L.A. Louver Gallery are the best he has made. More than any of his earlier pieces, which are also constructed from colorful bits of found metal carefully cut and cobbled into collages that completely cover plywood sheets, the 54-year-old artist’s newest works convince you, the instant you look at them, that they’re paintings.

This is no small achievement. It’s the source of his art’s power and has nothing to do with the fact that the segments and sections of metal Berlant methodically pieces together to form elaborate compositions are themselves painted, often in garish colors, sometimes with figurative scenes or with product labels and trademarks.

After all, just because something’s painted doesn’t mean it’s a painting--even if it’s hanging in an art gallery. Berlant’s tin collages are paintings and demand to be seen as such, because they work pictorially, using line, color, shape and texture to orchestrate complex visual experiences. Their identity is intrinsically linked to what they do to your eyes.

“Eye Dazzler” pretty clearly indicates what Berlant is after in his art. This airy, electrifying image measures 10-by-8-feet and depicts a fantastic landscape above whose horizon fly eight abstract creatures. They’re spindly, insect-like forms that could be drug-induced hallucinations or intangible spirits momentarily made visible by the artist’s painterly magic.

A nine-panel, 24-foot-long mural presents a panoramic view of Berlant’s spacious imagination, making room for dozens of quirky, animated forms that float, hover and scud across the vast, multicolored sky. The second largest picture, “Extended Ecstasy,” embodies painting’s capacity and Berlant’s desire to make pictorial illusions last--to suspend, in time, the abstract figures he has physically suspended in the enchanted space of painting.

The show-stopping highlight is a dense, stunning piece called “Last Song--For Grover Lewis.” In this compact rectangle of shattered fragments, space seems to implode, disintegrating into a vital field of tingling, immaterial energy. And that’s an apt description of how Berlant’s paintings work, sending charged impulses into your eyes in order to elicit responses that might not be seen but are intimately felt.

* L.A. Louver Gallery, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955, through July 29. Closed Sundays and Mondays.