Art Review

Recycled Treasures: Forgettable objects become poetic monuments to the everyday in Tony Feher’s unassuming mixed-media sculptures at Richard Telles Fine Art. A few glass bottles, marbles and Styrofoam bricks rescued from the trash heap are all that Feher needs to evoke the internal rhythm of prosaic activities, while simultaneously investing his Minimalist vocabulary with contemporary relevance.

Like Rachel Lachowicz’s red lipstick reinterpretations of Carl Andre’s formalist geometry, Feher tweaks Minimalism’s quest for absolute purity by using materials that display far less vaunted ambitions. Unlike Lachowicz’s implied feminist critique, Feher’s pink Styrofoam variation on Andre’s intractable brick walls doesn’t subvert Minimalism’s goals so much as reformulate and pare them down for an era of diminished expectations.

Arranged in stacks, rows and undulating patterns, Feher’s empty soft-drink bottles retain visible traces of their former use-value, bringing to mind the groups of people who may once have consumed them. Brown beer bottles of varying heights, each neck topped with a sunny yellow marble, seem to ripple and bounce in 1997’s “Untitled (Somethin’ Funky)” and recall a relaxed crowd of happy head-boppers at a blues bar or jazz festival. Across the room, seven red-capped Coke bottles, each partially filled with water and lined up against the wall, evoke the sweat and thirst of a sweltering summer afternoon.

Although his plain-spoken take on Minimalism may appear far less socially engaged than the beer bottle street-sculptures of an artist like David Hammons, Feher’s humble objects make a subtle statement of their own. In a world that’s literally overflowing with more waste than we know what to do with, Feher’s sculptural recyclings, most of them slight enough to trip over, ask us to look downward and consider other possibilities.

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* Richard Telles Fine Art, 7380 Beverly Blvd., (213) 965-5578, through Saturday.