Demonstrating That Time Is Where One Finds It

It was precisely 2:45 p.m. when I figured out Tim Hawkinson’s current show at Ace Contemporary Exhibitions. I’m not usually inclined to take a peek at my watch during an epiphany (when I’m lucky enough to have one), but Hawkinson has rigged things so that it is impossible--at any moment--to be unaware of the ticking of the clock.

That’s because this show is composed of about a dozen timepieces, not a single one of which is immediately visible. What is visible instead is a random scattering of ordinary things: an upturned bucket, an empty Coke can, an attache case, a plastic bag filled with Styrofoam peanuts, a box of crackers, a crumpled piece of paper and more.

This seems to add up to a whole lot of nothing--the prelude to an installation, perhaps, or hard evidence of how sloppy artists are when no one is looking. Yet the anti-spectacle soon begins to yield strange wonders: One of two delicate hairs sticking out of a hairbrush moves ever so slightly; a crushed Post-it note marking a page in an equipment catalog shifts; a metal clasp on a manila envelope budges; a staple sticking out of the top of a piece of paper stirs.

Linked by copper wire to a single power source, these hairs, metal clasps, Post-it notes and staples--not to mention extruded bits of toothpaste, Coke can tabs and lightbulb filaments--are the unlikeliest of minute hands on the unlikeliest array of clocks. Nor is Hawkinson averse to more primitive methods of timekeeping: The top of a cracker box works as a sundial, with the fluctuating shadow of a strategically positioned cracker crumb denoting the hour of the day.

Many metaphors about art are buried here. Ticking, especially in the vicinity of an attache case, conjures bombs and thus the so-called danger of art. The artist as clockmaker raises the old question of the divinity of art. And so on.

Yet Hawkinson’s inspired gimcrackery excuses any conceptual laxity. It yields such pleasure that any payoff over and above delight is superfluous.

* Ace Contemporary Exhibitions, 5514 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 935-4411, through March. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Revisiting Ruscha: Edward Ruscha first published “Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations” in 1962. Composed of flat-footed photographs of just what its title says, the book is one of the century’s finest examples of deadpan humor, not to mention the 1960s impulse to serialize, the Pop sensibility and the Conceptual mandate--California-style.

Some 30 years later, Jeffrey Brouws’ “Twenty-Six Abandoned Gasoline Stations” is on view at Craig Krull Gallery. If it can’t lay the same claim to posterity, it is a powerful exercise in humility.

Semi-disguised as an ode to a late, lamented institution, that “favorite public place where flat tires were fixed and the weather discussed”--as an insert in the beautifully produced book puts it--it is in fact an example of creative fandom. Indeed, even though Brouws tried to track down the original gas stations (all but one had been destroyed), social documentary is hardly the point. Engaging with Ruscha is.

Brouws produces a near-exact facsimile of Ruscha’s little classic, mimicking everything from the typeface to the layout of the images. The show prominently features a letter from Ruscha, placed reverently under glass, in which he asks to be put down for the first two copies of this book. Here would seem to be the acolyte’s ultimate wish fulfillment, although who is zooming whom is hardly an open question.

You could compare this project to that of another big-time fan: Sherrie Levine, who sets the late 20th century standard for image and text poaching. But you probably wouldn’t want to. Brouws doesn’t take himself half as seriously and, for that reason, though his “Twenty-Six Abandoned Gasoline Stations” is likewise not half as important, it is certainly doubly easy to like. The show also includes a distantly related project, “Highway,” a series of photographs of highways.

* Craig Krull Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, (310) 828-6410, through Feb. 17. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Revealing: “Prostitution,” at Paul Kopeikin Gallery, is as beautiful a show as you can imagine, especially considering that it is filled with photographs documenting the world’s oldest (and least glamorous) profession. It is also a remarkably benign show, which tells you something about the art photograph and its ability to neutralize content in search of form.

Here, for example, are images taken by everyone from Brassai and Ilse Bing to Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Nan Goldin, documenting subtle poses, brazen come-ons, dirty looks, misfired solicitations and endless waiting. But all I had eyes for were the luscious tones, theatrical haze and period details. These include a pair of black-and-white striped tights in a remarkable E.J. Bellocq “Storyville Portrait,” a patchwork of electrified color animating the exterior of a modern-day cathouse and the seductive film-noir aesthetic of Bill Brandt’s “Footsteps Coming Nearer.”

If you are looking for a show that interrogates the power relationships, morality or economics of men paying for sex, this isn’t it. On the other hand, if you accept visual delectation as a condition governing these kinds of sexual exchanges, “Prostitution” just might reveal more than it shows.

* Paul Kopeikin Gallery, 138 N. La Brea Ave., (213) 937-0765, through March 11. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Modernist Montage: It’s both amazing and not that younger artists are continuing to work through Modernism, considering how pandemic its forms and its ideals have been. The very least the hapless viewer can hope for is that, along with the anxiety of influence, the resulting Modernist homage, critique or burlesque displays some style.

The eight locals featured in “Bastards of Modernity” at Angles Gallery mostly do. Carter Potter, who weaves paintings from strips of 70-millimeter film, has long done his thing to geometric abstraction. Yet his ultra-high-gloss tableaux, which this time raise the ante by featuring serial images of cells, galaxies and unspecified but alarmingly gorgeous eruptions, also take on broader issues, wryly suggesting that the sublime is now merely a prerogative of technology.

His approach contrasts with the one-note gimmickry of Chris Wilder, who makes stripe paintings out of thick strips of gaffer’s tape on canvas, or of Kent Young, whose patchwork of dirty towels, affixed directly to the wall, tweaks oh-so-meekly at Piet Mondrian. Kevin Appel’s paintings are far more eccentric, masquerading as by-the-book Minimalist grids, only until they reveal themselves to be trompes l’oeil, depicting things like “Shelf With Speaker” or “Bookshelf No. 2.”

Like Appel, Jorge Pardo, Dani Tull and Jessica Bronson (the latter working with video) are all concerned with the cross-pollination of art historical and design idioms from the early to mid-20th century. If their mode can be described, collectively, as High Ironic, Shirley Tse’s is not so easy to pin down.

Her modular floor piece, constructed out of pieces of Styrofoam packing material, is lovingly covered in gruesomely shiny beige vinyl. It recalls work by everyone from Louise Nevelson to Bruce Nauman to Rachel Whiteread, but without a trace of good taste--not to mention a whiff of anxiety.

Tse conjures the mistakes that accrue when desire overwhelms sense, but that doesn’t preclude the work from being massively self-confident. Indeed, this artist’s fascination for all sorts of aesthetics--blandness and intricacy intertwined among them--is positively salubrious.

* Angles Gallery, 2230 Main St., Santa Monica, (310) 396-5019, through Feb. 15. Closed Sundays and Mondays.