A Paean to Workers in Savvy, Productive ‘Hands’

An installation by Mexican-born artist Marcos Ramirez “Erre” slyly celebrates the Puritan work ethic. Spread out over most of Iturralde Gallery’s floor and many of its walls, 187 black-and-white photographs depict the hands of men and women hard at work.

An impressive inventory of labor is displayed: Hands sewing, filing, roofing, repairing, typing and vacuuming are interspersed with hands steering trucks, picking strawberries, serving burgers, hauling fertilizers, welding mufflers, selling cars, operating computers and pouring cement, coffee or cocktails.

Librarians, police officers, firefighters, butchers, grocers, reporters, carpenters, consultants, artists, dealers and musicians are equally represented in Ramirez’s spirited version of American inclusiveness. Although profoundly contemporary, his installation is part of a democratic tradition powerfully described by Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Like their works, Ramirez’s “187 Pairs of Hands” has a rebellious edge. Offered as an argument against the state proposition that aims to limit the rights of undocumented immigrants, this work includes a cell-like enclosure with four makeshift sculptures and a large homemade book in which each person photographed has written his or her name, age, birthplace, job and immigration status.

Too savvy for political finger-pointing, Ramirez’s installation stands as a haunting reminder of the ideals on which the United States was founded. A supple indictment of current hypocrisy, it also serves as a pointed document of the hard work required by all citizens if the promise of democracy is to be anything more than a dream.

* Iturralde Gallery, 154 N. La Brea Ave., (213) 937-4267, through Jan. 18. Closed Sundays and Mondays; and closed from Dec. 22 to Jan. 6.

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Reality and Antidote: Last seen in a 1970 retrospective at the National Gallery of Budapest, Ervin Marton’s black-and-white photographs of Parisian streets and the war-torn Hungarian countryside juxtapose images of immense suffering with depictions of frivolous diversions. At Stephen Cohen Gallery, more than 60 vintage prints from the 1940s and ‘50s document a dramatic shift in modern consciousness: from firsthand experience to secondhand spectatorship.

Lowbrow entertainment gets the upper hand in this wide-ranging group of photographs by Marton (1912-1968). In Paris, the grand boulevards and streamlined avenues are bypassed in favor of neighborhood roads and intimate alleys, where street performers present makeshift amusements.

Small crowds of men, women and children often gather in Marton’s images, with their eyes glued to a variety of tacky subjects, including a sword swallower, a fire eater, a trained monkey and numerous street musicians. Other city dwellers spend their leisure perusing movie posters, watching children at play, dancing at parties or whiling away the afternoon at improvised carnivals. Such solitary pleasures as reading on the riverbank and napping in the park are also presented.

In terms of their subjects, Marton’s photos shot in Hungary couldn’t be more different. Gypsy encampments, refugees in tattered clothing, Red Cross trucks and ruined bridges bring the devastation of war up close and personal. But the photographer’s evenhanded treatment prevents this side of his oeuvre from appearing to be more serious than his images of urban diversions. Grim reality and momentary escapes have equal weight in Marton’s well-rounded art.

* Stephen Cohen Gallery, 7358 Beverly Blvd., (213) 937-5525, through Dec. 28. Closed Sundays and Mondays.