An Unsettling View of Racism in ‘Blackface’

The gray areas of racism take compelling--and troublesome--shape in David Levinthal’s newest suite of large-format Polaroids. At Craig Krull Gallery, 11 prints from the New York-based photographer’s “Blackface” series demonstrate that even the explosively divisive topic of racism cannot be neatly divided into black-and-white oppositions.

Each of Levinthal’s shiny Polaroids is a close-up of a piece of blatantly racist memorabilia, set against a black velvet backdrop and bathed in the glow of bright white spotlights. Included are stunningly unsentimental pictures of tin Amos ‘n’ Andy figurines, ceramic cookie jars in the shape of Aunt Jemima or a smiling bellhop, a plaster statuette of a cartoonish Nubian warrior and a couple of kids eating a piece of watermelon that’s nearly as big as both of them.

A wind-up toy of a boy, whose backside constantly gets nipped by a pursing dog, reveals that playfulness sometimes segues into menace--especially if you’re on the receiving end of it. Likewise, a metal silhouette of a miniature bartender, affixed atop an antique cigarette lighter, suggests that one’s smallest, almost unconscious actions can be loaded with ominous implications.

As a whole, Levinthal’s photographs are disturbing only because they’re beautiful. If these pictures of knickknacks, produced and (predominantly) consumed by whites, were ugly, it would be clear that they were part of the artist’s well-meaning critique of some of the demeaning and debilitating stereotypes that plague life in the real world.

But Levinthal doesn’t let viewers off the hook so easily. Rather than inviting us to look at his work to determine whether or not he’s racist, he invites us to scrutinize the racist potential lurking beneath our own skins--whether we identify with, or distance ourselves from, what’s depicted in these images.

After all, if art only told us what kind of person its maker was, no one would be very interested in it. Nor would it have much power over any of us.

In contrast, such art as Levinthal’s uses beauty to do some pretty ugly work. Sending mixed messages, these slick, supersaturated photographs draw viewers into various traps that cannot be escaped without very difficult questions being raised, if not answered.

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

Tug of War: Don Suggs’ black-and-white photographs of ordinary people doing everyday things dramatize the act of looking at the world. To view the artist’s 13 large prints at L.A. Louver Gallery is to see that much of what we think we see is actually fabricated by our brains.

On first glance, Suggs’ panoramic images of tourists visiting scenic overlooks, people walking in the street and men playing pickup basketball look like naturalistic pictures of unremarkable activities. The first idea that comes to mind is that these competent photos are too indebted to a subject more fully explored by Roger Minick (currently at Jan Kesner Gallery), and to a style wholly recognized as David Hockney’s, to merit much attention of their own.

But, just as this sense of familiarity begins to lull you into complacency, Suggs’ seemingly unified compositions begin to disintegrate right before your eyes. What had initially appeared to be complete bodies are suddenly revealed to be out-of-scale fragments juxtaposed to one another.

The more closely you look, the more disembodied limbs, fractured forms and out-of-sync segments you notice. Once seen, it’s very difficult to believe that you ever overlooked these disruptive, often unsettling details.

Further inspection reveals that each of Suggs’ pictures consists of hundreds of borderless, 5-inch-square prints arranged in six-sided clusters that overlap to form dense, quilt-like patterns of repeating rectangles, diamonds, stars and polygons. Viewed from an angle, the surfaces of these composite photographs resemble the scales of some symmetrical reptile, or the molecular structure of some crystalline compound.

In the end, Suggs’ ingenious images invite viewers to slip back and forth between two modes of looking. In the first, your eyes glide over visual inconsistencies, knitting together a seemingly complete picture of the world “out there.”

In the second, your attention gets stuck on these visual glitches, preventing a coherent image from gelling. A stimulating tug of war between your eyes and your mind ensues, as it becomes evident how much of the world we make up by simply skipping over what doesn’t fit into our inner picture of it.

* L.A. Louver Gallery, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955, through May 10. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Inside Out: Michael Reafsnyder’s compact paintings at Blum & Poe Gallery are some of the strangest of the season. After the sneers, guffaws and snickers they initially elicit subside, it’s clear that this young abstract painter’s solo debut ranks among the best of recent memory.

His modestly scaled oils on panel hit your visual system like a punch in the eye. Viewers don’t respond to these exceptional images as much as they react to them. Involuntary and extreme, such physical interaction demonstrates that something like instinct takes over in the presence of Reafsnyder’s art.

That’s no mean feat. Especially since Reafsnyder’s panels are painted in a loose, gestural style that recalls the gut-wrenching, soul-searching flourishes of much Abstract Expressionism.

In pointed contrast to that style, which meant to plumb the depths of the artist’s psyche in a quest for authenticity, Reafsnyder’s paintings put the instincts of viewers front and center. Profoundly contemporary, these loaded works turn the old-fashioned idea of art as self-expression inside out. Like Rorschach blots, they tell more about viewers than whoever made them.

Plus, Reafsnyder’s panels wreak havoc on conventional wisdom about abstract painting. Painted primarily in reds, yellows and blues squeezed straight from the tube, his furiously worked surfaces look as if they’re the dimwitted second cousins of Gerhard Richter’s exquisitely refined paintings.

Nevertheless, Reafsnyder’s pictures do not rely on any sort of “aw shucks,” country bumpkin charm. Cuteness has no place in these fiercely civilized paintings. Although many include stick-figure faces staring straight at you, these goofy components only intensify the jittery edginess generated by Reafsnyder’s weirdly electrifying art.

* Blum & Poe Gallery, 2042 Broadway, Santa Monica, (310) 453-8311, through May 3. Closed Sundays and Mondays.