Filling the ‘Absence’ : Chapman Deftly Crafts Its Exhibit on a Complex Philosophical Theme

Sometimes, an exhibition is so timely and focused and full of vital work that it reaffirms your belief in the conjoining of curatorial and artistic vision.

“Absence,” deftly assembled by curator Maggi Owens for the Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University (through April 18), is such a show.

Underlined by a witty and well-argued essay by Los Angeles artist and writer D. Hullfish Bailey, “Absence” presents the work of eight mostly well-known Los Angeles and New York artists who deal with the gap between the world out there and our attempts to perceive it.

Each artist’s focus and approach is distinctly different, but all fruitfully explore the tension between experience and knowledge in work that--despite the complex philosophical nature of the theme--is compelling on both visual and conceptual levels.

Uta Barth, the photographer whose recent work has explored the periphery of vision, is represented by several pieces from her “Ground” series.

These small, often deliberately blurry images of barely discernible portions of domestic interiors are quite lovely in themselves, sometimes dissolving into almost abstract bits of color irradiated with sunlight. “Ground No. 59”--a luminous glance at two doorways--has something of the wondrous quality of interiors by the Dutch 17th century master Johannes Vermeer.

But something else is also afoot in these images. Normally, we pay attention to the objects in photographs. Barth wants to shift our focus to the process of seeing and the expectations bound up with it.

There is no visible human presence in Barth’s photograph of the back of a leather couch with an empty stretch of wall above it (“Ground No. 52”). The void we feel in looking at the image is created by the tradition established by countless photographers, amateur and professional alike, who have posed sitters in such a setting.

But why do they choose it, and what does it convey? Barth deliberately leaves the question as open as the vast field of ambient imagery surrounding the object of the photographer’s gaze.

Somewhat similarly, the fascination of the interiors in John Divola’s presentation of movie-set stills from the 1930s (“Mirrors”) derives from the absence of the expected human presence.

Though as moviegoers we don’t tend to question the plausibility of interior locations, these images of bedrooms and living rooms--reprinted from vintage Warner Bros. negatives--look stagy and unreal. Even the apparent attempts of set decorators to create the look of a ransacked room seem laughably feeble.

Lorna Simpson replaces the human figure with individual pieces of tableware in her subtle and complex text-and-photo piece, “Nine Props.”

It is a meditation on the disjunctions between images remembered and described, between the social customs of distinct generations, between real life and the conventions of photography, and between specific African Americans and the viewer’s own abilities to see them as individuals rather than as part of a group.

The piece is based on specific works by noted black photographer James Van Der Zee (1886-1983), famous for pioneering portraits of middle-class Harlem residents. But the only traces of Van Der Zee’s photographs in Simpson’s work are her detailed yet flatly unrevealing written descriptions of them, each accompanied by an image of an opaque black vase, glass or set of cups.

Although these images allude to the social setting in which each sitter was posed, their generalized, silhouettelike presence--reinforced by being printed on felt--gives them a remote, generic look echoing Simpson’s descriptions of the original photographs.

Subjects of the Van Der Zee photographs Simpson draws on range from a tea at a top Harlem beauty salon in 1929 to a 1981 portrait of Max Robinson, a pioneering network TV anchorman, decked out in a tux and medals. The level of formality evoked by Simpson’s descriptions conjures a distant time, perhaps as difficult for some viewers to relate to as the very notion of the Harlem Renaissance.

Other artists in the show examine ideas of absence in equally individual and memorable ways.

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Among Theresa Pendlebury and Jane McElheney’s joint works, “Scream and Scream Again” is the most engaging: a droll reworking of the open mouth of Edvard Munch’s famous screaming figure as two small oval pieces of framed black velvet.

Taking a work of art that has become the poster child of psychic emptiness, crossbreeding it with the art form most evocative of cultural emptiness (painting on velvet), and doubling it to make a pair of empty cartoon-like eyes, the duo invoke the closed loop of pop-culture references.

Elizabeth Bryant also uses cheesy materials (cheap imported patterned rugs of various nationalities) but in a very different way--as universal symbols of the yearning for a mythic version of Nature.

In “The Migration of Paradise,” the rugs--each invaded by symmetrical cutouts resembling old computer graphics--are arranged into a pattern on the floor surrounding the image of an 18th century Persian garden carpet.

Ross Bleckner’s vast mixed-media painting, “Invisible Heaven,” summons up the effect of a cathedral dome interior from an arrangement of metallic gray diamond-shaped pieces of modeling clay.

Part of a series of transcendent spatial pieces Bleckner made in the early ‘90s, the image creates a vision at once abstract and empty, and emotionally full (the soaring psychological effect associated with domed spaces). In the shadow of AIDS, the piece suggests dualities of loss and spiritual embrace.

“Absence”--which also has work by Carrie Mae Weems and Daniel Wheeler--once again indicates Chapman’s dominating presence among Orange County venues that emphasize an intellectual and spirited understanding of art.

* What: “Absence.”

* When: Through April 18. The gallery is open Mondays-Fridays from noon-5 p.m., Saturdays from 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

* Where: Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange.

* Whereabouts: Exit the Garden Grove (22) Freeway at Glassell Street exit, head north and go three blocks past Chapman Avenue to the college. Or take the Chapman Avenue exit from either the Santa Ana (5) Freeway (and head east) or the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway (and head west) to Glassell Street, then head north for three blocks.

* Wherewithal: Free.

* Where to call: (714) 997-6729.