‘Seconds,’ Please : Steven Roden’s Exquisite Video of Light and Shadow Expands on Vision of His Paintings, Sculptures

A return trip to artist and musician Steven Roden’s world of odd beauty and unusual juxtapositions is one journey I’m always up for. In this case, the conveyances are new paintings, sculptures and a film at Costa Mesa’s Griffin Linton Contemporary Exhibitions through Jan. 29. The literary sensitivities of this Los Angeles artist are again much in evidence but coupled with a new breadth of vision.

The most unexpected piece in the show is “Book of Seconds,” a black-and-white Super-8 film transferred to video and given an intimately scaled airing on a small TV set. The film consists of a “diary” of soft-edged, 10-second images of sun and shadow, filmed on successive days.

Somewhat reminiscent of the work of experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage (“Window, Water, Baby Moving”), the film is an exquisite compilation of still and moving light patterns, from a totemic vertical beam reminiscent of a Barnett Newman “zip” painting to small, throbbing clusters of reflected light and the graceful shadow-dance of an unseen sheet flapping on a line.

Now and then the screen turns soft gray, as if briefly retreating to a nonvisual mental space. (These neutral segments mark the days Roden didn’t capture a light-and-shadow image.) In this brief, dreamlike film--clips from an existence distilled to visual reverie--scale, pacing and tone mesh in near perfection.

Sculptural works in the show are teasingly metaphorical. Best of all is “Cloud Formation,” a flying wedge of blue- or white-painted wooden blocks representing a charmingly schematic view of the interrelation of sky and clouds. The piece is the embodiment of the Romantic view of cloud formations as infinitely receptive to the idle imagination.

As a solid, tangible mass that can be pushed around--the piece is mounted on tiny wheels--”Cloud Formation” amusingly represents the opposite of the remote and amorphous substance clouds typically are imagined to be.

Opposing qualities are built into the work, depending on whether you put the stress on the “formation” (blocks mobilized in a wing-like arrangement for ground action) or the “cloud” (an arrangement of colored blocks that could be a rainy-day nursery project).

*

All but one of Roden’s paintings are small, haltingly ornamental meditations on sounds and words and shapes.

In “Star,” the title word at the top of the curiously puffy blue and black canvas and two footprint-like shapes suggest the rooted position of a stargazer as well as a curious tactile inversion of the familiar image of the sky as a bowl. A transparent orange form superimposed on the words in “Touch for Get” recalls a balloon inflated to its bursting point, which in turn evokes both the tactility and evanescence of the title words.

It might seem that Roden’s quiet legerdemain wouldn’t work on a large scale, and perhaps 4-by-8-feet was pushing it in “Song of the Water Nymphs.” But an engaging scheme of patterning gives the painting almost a decorative-screen effect, while the theme of evaporation as a gradual extinguishing of color and shape has ample room to demonstrate its guises.

In the gallery’s loft, new sculptures by Huong Vu, a 1995 graduate of Cal State Fullerton’s master of fine arts program, represent a shift to a more distinctively personal style. Yet the new work seems to be hiding glimmers of meaning under a veneer of gimmickry.

Vu previously used wire mesh to make net-like containers or organic shapes (pods, spirals); he now assembles large-scale pieces alluding to floral and other natural forms from immaculately ordered rows of plastic clothespins in carefully sorted pastel colors.

The contrast between tradition-steeped organic subjects and forms (one of which--”Lotus”--evokes specifically Asian cultural allusions) and a cheap, mass-produced Western household tool is too obvious to be interesting in itself.

Yet the obsessiveness involved in making these sculptures--and the sweet pastel colors--might relate to the over-finicky, prettified “artistry” of Asian crafts made for the tourist market, betraying some of the world’s great art traditions for the sake of Western dollars.

In any case, it is always encouraging to see an artist trying out new ideas. Especially in the beginning, the journey matters more than the destination.

* Work by Steve Roden and Huong Vu, through Jan. 29 at Griffin Linton Contemporary Exhibitions, 1640 Pomona Ave., Costa Mesa. Hours: noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, and by appointment. Free. (714) 646-5665.