ART REVIEW : GALLERY: Conceptual Works, Early and Late : Early Works Fare Best in Exhibit by 3 Conceptualists

At Thomas Solomon’s Garage, a sharply focused show of one early and one recent work by each of three pioneering Conceptualists delineates this movement’s largely successful attempt to shift art away from visual experience--out of galleries or museums and toward logical or arbitrary structures that involve aspects of time and linguistic propositions.

Three pieces from 1969, 1970 and 1971 document the lean, fresh irreverence of early Conceptualism. Douglas Huebler’s small watercolor playfully asserts that images deceive and words tell the truth. Robert Barry’s slim poem optimistically insists that art--meaning thought--is a matter of how you look at the world, not what you see there. And Sol LeWitt’s instructions for making a wall drawing demonstrate that anyone can be an artist if you just put in the time.

Three pieces from the past three years, however, mark a dulling of Conceptualism’s critical edge. Huebler’s printed message, superimposed over a landscape painted in acrylic on canvas, acknowledges the power of pictures, but only as a distraction from language’s true power. Barry’s evocative, individual words, floating at various angles over a pristine wall, and LeWitt’s pretty gouache, depicting irregular, color-coordinated vertical bands, entirely rely on their placement in a gallery or museum.

All three artists’ recent work gets into trouble because it embraces the space of the gallery while maintaining its makers’ original antipathy toward the visual. Late Conceptualism’s critique of visual experience thus becomes a symbolic exercise: captivating not because it’s effective in the real world, but because it’s interesting to look at in a gallery.

Also at Thomas Solomon’s Garage, Linda Hudson’s multiuse installation in the upstairs gallery makes the best of classic Conceptualism, maintaining its desire to dematerialize the art object without rehashing its hypocritical assault on visual experience. Rather than replaying language games or flirting with the power of words, Hudson’s multi-part art revels in the mysteries of the visible.

Titled “Made to Order,” her mesmerizing work deftly plays off the small room’s status as both a gallery and an office. To confuse ordinary distinctions between functional objects and art, Hudson has built a beautiful desk that disappears into the wall. She has also installed a simple polyurethane bench so that its seat and back are far apart and perpendicular to one another, causing furniture to do double duty as a creamy monochrome painting.

Hudson’s backless bench can function as a table for three large glass bowls resting on the floor on a sheet of glass the exact size of the bench. These shallow, translucent vessels seem to overflow with light that pours through a pair of large windows in the opposite corner.

A small abstract landscape painting, framed only on its sides and top, provides a clue to Hudson’s light-handed art. This piece’s only foundation is the thin air over which it’s suspended. Likewise, Hudson’s installation pulls the rug out from under your feet, transforming the seemingly empty spaces between things into an almost tactile presence that may not be fully visible, but is undeniably sensual.

* Thomas Solomon’s Garage, 928 N. Fairfax Ave., (213) 654-4731, through Feb. 24. Closed Sundays and Mondays.