ART REVIEW

Life’s Cycle: Mortality is very much alive as a theme in art these days, and not just addressed symbolically, as in traditional vanitas, but literally, in the form of actual, organic decay. If Damien Hirst’s “installations” of maggots and rotting flesh occupy the grotesque end of the spectrum, fellow Londoner Anya Gallacio’s transient poetry in flowers, ice and fruit gracefully reigns over the other.

Her installation “In a Moment” at Blum & Poe Gallery consists of two giant daisy chains made from 365 gold and violet Gerbera daisies. The chains loop over one another and the gallery’s L-shaped lighting track, hanging like casual tracery, lacy curtains of blossoms and stems. A cluster of the purple flowers pools on the floor toward one side, and numerous loose petals are scattered about.

Since the show’s opening in mid-October, the flowers in the chain have dried out and become droopy. What started out as vibrant and vital now looks somewhat forlorn, a testament to faded beauty. Though Gallacio’s gesture at first seems slight, its poignancy gradually builds.

The work awakens the memory of child’s play, with all of the lost innocence that implies. And with the number of flowers used being the same as the number of days in the year, the chain becomes a quiet but stirring metaphor for the process of knitting together days into weeks and months and years, each of which rise, take shape and fall away, transience being a necessary condition of the cycle of life.

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* Blum & Poe, 2042 Broadway, Santa Monica, (310) 453-8311, through Nov. 22.