ART REVIEW : Works by Hannelore Baron: Timeless, Untraditional

Although the diminutive collages and doll-size assemblages by Hannelore Baron (1926-1987) clearly belong to the 20th Century, it’s impossible to link them to a specific decade. Real strangers to time’s steady progression, these haunting works at Manny Silverman Gallery are timeless in a profoundly untraditional sense.

Lovingly stitched, glued, pressed and cobbled together over the last 17 years of the German emigre’s life, the well-worn clusters of torn rice paper, faded fabric, weathered metal and scavenged wood do not stand above time as immortal monuments of artistic transcendence. On the contrary, these forlorn constructions seem to slip through the cracks of history, falling into a no-man’s-land of quietly endured suffering.

Patience and restraint are the watchwords of Baron’s humble works. Abstract and inviting, their indecipherable symbols and translucent layers of mundane materials seem to whisper secrets that cannot be expressed aloud.

Intimate yet never overtly personal, Baron’s sober, unsentimental art is about the feel of experience rather than the knowledge gleaned from it. Her patchwork offerings reveal that the only lesson to be learned from history is that it must be lived through by every one of us, one moment at a time.

* Manny Silverman Gallery, 619 N. Almont Drive, West Hollywood, (310) 659-8256, through Dec . 23. Closed Sundays and Mondays .