Visions in Metal, Steeled by Whimsy

A magnificent exhibition of new work by Janis Kounellis at ACE Gallery finds the Arte Povera pioneer reveling in the brutal quality of his industrial materials--cold, rolled steel and coal-filled burlap--while disavowing their austerity. One might call such a maneuver coy, but Kounellis is so well-versed in his idiom that he can afford to twist it in any number of directions.

Taking full advantage of the gallery’s mix of narrow corridors, hidden corners and soaring spaces, Kounellis comes off as a warlord and an interior decorator, claiming space with vast beams of steel that rudely prop up walls and ceilings, and embellishing them with fine sheets of metal that cover the window panes with cunning exactitude.

Arte Povera is often taken to be Italy’s answer to Minimalism, but Kounellis’ distance from his American counterparts has never been more evident. Where someone like Richard Serra goes in for looming, vertiginous structures whose will-to-power sometimes feels gratuitous, Kounellis’ looming, vertiginous structures are full of whimsy.

Three crisscrossing beams that dominate one room are offset by an old sewing machine dangling from a fine length of metal; a corridor filled with crossed beams forms a bower of petrified trees. Best of all is a large installation of T-shaped steel forms that pin antique wooden armoires against the ceiling. These works pit the thrift store against the construction site, the warm against the cold, ornament against structure. The point is not to declare a winner but to celebrate the possibility of exchange.

* ACE Gallery, 5514 Wilshire Blvd., (213) 935-4411, through March. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Gothic Fun: Everyone loves a zeitgeist, and with the end of the millennium so tantalizingly near, the fever is particularly high. So why not Gothic Revival? Transforming anxiety into pleasure and objects of fear into objects of desire, it neatly accounts for all sorts of things, from the current fascination with extraterrestrials and genetic engineering to the new dystopian shades of nail polish like “Acid Rain” and “Greed.”

All of which makes Clarence John Laughlin’s black-and-white photographs, now at Fahey-Klein, of veiled women, crumbling edifices and veiled women in crumbling edifices perfectly apropos, despite the fact that they were created decades ago. With titles like “The Unborn,” “House of Hysteria,” “Triumph of Black” and “The Phantasm,” these multiple exposures and wildly theatrical setups convey a delight in dread that is unsurprising in someone who spent his life in New Orleans enmeshed in Baudelaire when he wasn’t busy writing his own Gothic fiction.

Laughlin began taking pictures in the 1930s, and though his images show their age, they also betray a mordant sense of humor that approaches our era’s beloved irony. The best of them, however, document more than comment, showing Laughlin’s decaying Louisiana environs, from abandoned churches to lone houses in the woods. They play it straight, or as straight as possible for someone who thought he could capture “The Avid Head of Havoc” on a silver gelatin print.

* Fahey-Klein Gallery, 148 N. LaBrea Ave., (213) 934-2250, through Jan. 3. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Photo Dressing: The relationship between art and fashion has proven nearly impossible to theorize about, despite a deluge of recent attempts, from Artforum’s now-defunct clothes column to the first (and probably last) Florence Biennale of Art and Fashion, which featured banalities like Valentino-draped mannequins flanking Michelangelo’s “David.”

“The Pneumatic Quilt,” a collaboration between Japanese designer Issey Miyake and Los Angeles artist Tim Hawkinson at ACE Gallery, similarly fails to impress. In fact, the show is less a collaboration than a gussied-up documentation of a commercial venture, i.e. Hawkinson’s stint as a guest artist for Miyake’s Pleats Please line of clothing.

Hawkinson applies his trademark gimcrackery to the world of built-in obsolescence, which seems like a good idea but doesn’t turn out to be a perfect fit. The work consists of a tapestry of sorts, made up of working drawings, the garments themselves--decorated with Hawkinson’s alternately fine and spindly or rude and Rorschach-esque imagery--and photographs thereof. The garment case used to transport the clothing has been converted into a generator that blows air into selected bits of fabric, emphasizing their anthropomorphic qualities, a pretty redundant metaphor, but the only thing here you can sink your teeth into.

You can order the pleated clothing at the gallery’s front desk. The press release frames this as a chance for the viewer to participate in the work, which doesn’t exactly wash. It might be better to take it as a not-very-incisive rejoinder to those who like to think art isn’t a commodity.

* ACE Gallery, 5514 Wilshire Blvd., (213) 935-4411, through March. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Model Images: Having served his apprenticeship with well-known fashion photographers Deborah Turbeville and Greg Gorman, it isn’t surprising that some of James Whitlow Delano’s photographs of Asia at Paul Kopeikin Gallery look like they come straight out of Vogue magazine.

For example, a Tibetan outside the Labrang Monastery turns to stare down the photographer, a white fur hat poised on her head and a snow leopard wrapped across her shoulders; or a Chinese infant looks out from under a cleverly wrapped veil, surrounded by four disembodied hands, fussing over him like an bevy of highly paid stylists.

Even when the images depict landscape sites--rice terraces in the Philippines or the Palace Gate in Mandalay, Burma--hauteur dominates. The careful imposition of elegance makes the work difficult to categorize. It adopts the subject matter of ethnographic photography but strays from its conventions. Of course, this isn’t a particularly radical move. The very snap of the shutter tends to impose order on chaos; Delano doesn’t try to conceal the fact, and thankfully, does it better than most.

* Paul Kopeikin Gallery, 138 N. La Brea Ave., (213) 937-0765, through Jan. 20. Closed Sunday and Monday.