Gallery an Inspiring Setting for 2 Shows

Some art spaces are inspiring enough to affect the evolution of art they eventually host. Count the large, luminous gallery at the Brand Library in Glendale as one of them. And count the new exhibition from painter Dean Andrews as one of those acutely site-specific artistic events.

Andrews developed her series of paintings, subtly layered and graduated works that suggest skyscapes, with the knowledge of the impending exhibition. A symbiotic relationship between art and walls is part of the ultimate, meditative charm.

She calls the show “You Are Here,” and her 15 uniformly scaled, 68-inch-square paintings go under the title “Presence,” a clear indication of her intent to celebrate this particular space.

As much an installation piece as a showing of individual works, the artist’s serial canvases make for a dramatic sight, in ways that seem both minimalist and monumental, with an effect both bracing and soothing.

The canvases, hung at precise intervals around the gallery, are stapled to the wall. They are denied frames, which tend to set up hierarchal separations between art and art space.

Although leaning toward soft shades of blue, green, gray and rose, Andrews’ art is deceptively calm and limited of palette. In fact, delicate layers of color and flowing brushwork give the paintings personality, while adhering to a fairly strict, post-minimalist aesthetic. Yet Andrews’ brand of painting has a warm, objective lyricism instead of the cold, calculating snap of some minimalism.

If the end result of the exhibition is a kind of transcendental appreciation of the effects of light and color in a given, generous space, it is also a celebration of the purely physical aspect of a gallery--this gallery.

These paintings are illusory in that they evoke neatly framed expanses of sky or sea or pure painterly expression and exploration, but in the end, remain as paintings.

There’s nothing virtual about it. There lies part of the subtle power.

Mixed Metaphor--Media: From an entirely different perspective--and also at the Brand--is Carole Kim. Kim uses natural and unusual elements in her work, but throws them out of context--or, more to the point, throws them into new contexts. She mixes media and metaphors with equal wit and abandon.

In “Coal,” a row of blackened apples hangs on a pole, wreaking havoc with the usual symbolic baggage we bring to images of ripe, red apples. Eucalyptus pods, a familiar sight in these parts and often viewed as a nuisance, are painted and presented as coveted fruits in “Milk Berries.”

At the end of a hallway, there is the slightly creepy “Kosinski’s Closet,” with its sections of plaster anatomy piled in a tall, vertical box, obscured just enough to blur the vision: Is it an image of human atrocity or simply art supplies? You decide.

“Spine I” is a narrow, harshly vertical relief sculpture made from, among other materials, burnt slides, that basic material of an artist’s life and livelihood. The artist also shows a keen interest in process art, often relying on low-tech means.

On one wall are several evolutionary pieces using carbon paper and xerography, in the series she calls “Rash Drawings, Potentiality Has a Shelf Life . . .”

Throughout, Kim shows an appreciation of the physicality and assembly process of her works. But nagging little questions are attached to the construction and connection between the materials. The questions provide the grist.

* Dean Andrews, “You Are Here,” and works by Carole Kim, through April 9, at the Brand Library, 1601 W. Mountain St., Glendale. Call 548-2051.