Art Review

Art You Can Adopt: Victor Estrada’s small to medium-size sculptures at Shoshana Wayne Gallery have the presence of pets. Standing close to the ground on three, four or eight stubby legs, or else stretching out on distended bellies, these multicolored creatures with mutant appendages are at once foreign and forlorn. You won’t be alone if you want to take one home, even though you have no idea of what you’re getting into.

More often than not that’s exactly what happens when people buy art--although it’s never acknowledged by critics who think that collecting is mere acquisition, a fetishistic activity tainted by money. With a great economy of means, Estrada’s new works show that getting a pet and buying a sculpture have more in common than you might think.

An art world truism has it that sculptures are harder to sell than paintings because they take up too much floor space. Estrada’s lumpy “animals” work their way into your heart by embracing this platitude wholeheartedly.

Their low-down stature, mischievous demeanor and messy, unfinished quality make it difficult to display them prominently or prestigiously. Even the 10-foot-tall one with a built-in pedestal, an elephant among mutts, looks dumpy. No matter where one of these human-scaled blobs of wire, silicone and pigment is placed, it always seems to be underfoot.

And if that weren’t enough, all of Estrada’s imaginary critters have a few spindly appendages that resemble tails, trunks, limbs or the antennae from early sputnik spacecraft. Sometimes as thin as wires, at other times as substantial as coat racks or balcony railings, these awkward extensions are often more than 5 feet long and always festooned with balloon-like spheres, glitter-covered discs, plastic eyeballs or wigs--all the better to get in your way when you get them home.

For viewers this means that, like having a pet for many years, living with sculpture is a lot different from pet-sitting, or gallery-going. Its commitments are more demanding, but its satisfactions are deeper and longer lasting.

*

* Shoshana Wayne Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, (310) 453-7535, through Saturday. Closed Sundays and Mondays.