‘Open House’ Offers Only Cold Comfort to Families

They say there’s no place like home. There certainly is no home quite like the one on view in Art Center’s exhibition “Open House.” Or is there?

The show is the brainchild of L.A. artist John O’Brien, who acted as its curator. It consists of installations by 21 local artists and two poets. For the project, the Pasadena college’s Williamson Gallery was subdivided into 13 spaces suggesting everything from living room to attic and yard. Artists were invited to use them as containers for their feelings about the state of domestic existence. Although only some participants are related in reality, most worked in teams, suggesting the idea of couples sharing living space.

Even though each project was independently conceived, there is surprising--and chilling--unanimity among the interpretations. The paucity of furnishings in most rooms creates an aura of sterility. Neither of two bathrooms, for example, contains anything resembling a sink or toilet. One, by Liz Young, has only an enclosure resembling a dysfunctional shower stall. The master bath by Lauren Lesko is empty save a dance-hall-style mirrored globe and a set of earphones.

The kitchen by Jorge Pardo and Pae White is equally innocent of stove, refrigerator or the myriad gadgets considered indispensable in a consumer culture. Instead, we find just three sculptures fashioned with Buckminster Fuller ingenuity out of clothespins and plastic foam cups.

Even though these ad hoc pieces are handsome, they don’t mitigate the general aura of a barren place. The American home, it seems, is the opposite of its fabled status as a retreat of privacy, comfort and relaxation.

The dining room table in Mara Lonner and Sylvia Bowyer’s room has a cloth emblazoned with the motto, “You are welcome if you behave.” The master bedroom by Susan Silton and Terry Wolverton casts the master of the house as a kind of circus performer. A bed is replaced by an acrobat’s swing where the well-trained master could hang until one of the alarm clocks rings.

If that’s reality in the minds of these artists, no wonder they don’t seem to see anyone living in it. So what do they see instead? Escaping into the media, of course.

The main focus of the living room by Andrea Bowers and Sam Durant is a television set. It rests on a carpet littered with magazines. The single piece of furniture is a tandem folding beach chair. The telly broadcasts a tape on which the artists behave like a young couple who bicker constantly.

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The official TV room of the house was fashioned by Paul Tzanetopoulos and Bill Leavitt. It does a good job of capturing the essence of an arid tract house. A conventional TV broadcasts a silly game show for married folks. The big attraction, however, is a huge projection screen showing an ant colony at work. Could there be social commentary afoot?

Out in the yard, Daniel Wheeler has fashioned a metal mesh chair attached to a viewing screen. It, presumably, is hooked to a model “dream house” that sits atop a meandering pole. Ah, the rich who live at the summit and have a magnificent panorama. The trouble is that all the views are cliche picture post-cards suspended in front of the model.

It’s one of the exhibition’s cleverest pieces. Yet even it is chewed by a generic problem that dogs “Open House.” For all I know, the show’s polemic may be dead accurate. Politicians keep telling us the American family is falling apart. Here, however, the cursory, underdeveloped installations deliver a message suggesting an eroded art, niggardly in expression, tight-fisted in emotional generosity. The effect may be caused by some manner of deadline or budgetary constraints, but it’s inescapably present.

The children’s room by John Outterbridge and his daughter, Tami Lynn, offers rare contrast. The space is chock-a-block with dolls, memorabilia, a model of a fairy-tale galleon, the Cadillac of all hobbyhorses and enough colors to look like a rainbow over Santa’s workshop.

Outterbridge is a respected veteran L.A. African American artist. There is no mistaking that the room is that of a black child, with its dark-skinned dolls and its African American family photographs. In all likelihood it is a fantasy, an illusion that runs counter to the reality faced by many American black kids. It is a paean to hope and imagination.

* “Open House,” Art Center College of Design, 1700 Lida St., Pasadena; through Dec. 20, closed Mondays, (818) 396-2244.