A Tragicomic Yet Hilarious Drama With Hirsch Perlman’s Compelling Characters

After an impressive series of well-received solo shows in the U.S. and Europe, which culminated in a 1996 exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Hirsch Perlman appeared to fall off the face of the Earth. What the rising young art star actually did was move from Chicago to Los Angeles, where he rented a nondescript house in Mount Washington.

From the outside, everything looked normal. Even when visitors entered the residence, there was no reason to think that anything unusual was going on. But downstairs, behind a closed door at the end of a hall, something strange was taking place.

This is where Perlman went to think--to escape the time-consuming, energy-sapping and attention-devouring demands of modern life so he could mull things over at his own pace. Using his makeshift studio as a decompression chamber, he sat still long enough to allow the gnawing doubts about what he was doing to take on a life of their own.

They grew into a tragicomic drama so despairing and hilarious that it rivals Samuel Beckett’s capacity to make you feel as if you’re on the verge of simultaneous laughter and tears. At Blum & Poe Gallery, 48 mid-size photographs made with a pinhole camera chronicle what Perlman did in the bare-walled room for the better part of the last four years.

In the beginning, he taped a few empty cardboard boxes (left over from the move) to one another, forming a life-size figure that he posed in various positions. The prints depict a cardboard Everyman leaning casually against the wall, slumping dejectedly in the corner, huddling vulnerably behind his meager possessions, lying face-down on the floor and kicking back in a chair, apparently without a worry in the world. In one of the simplest compositions, its legs are pulled up toward its chest and its hands are clenched overhead, as if beseeching the Almighty for just a bit of respite, never mind redemption.

As the days went by, Perlman brought more packaging materials into the room and made additional figures. Sometimes his cast of characters is depicted as if engaged in friendly conversation, like art students hanging around a messy studio. At other times, they seem to be stumbling through the aftermath of horrendously violent crimes, trying to comprehend their irrevocable acts.

Eventually, they all disappear and a giant head takes shape. Resembling a cross between an Easter Island totem and a Mr. Potato Head toy made of materials from the recycling bin, Perlman’s effigy suggests that the relationship Tom Hanks has with the volleyball in “Cast Away” is only the tip of the iceberg. The human need to communicate is so strong that one doesn’t need others to carry on a meaningful conversation--especially when one’s head is filled with characters as compelling as those that live in Perlman’s imagination.

* Blum & Poe Gallery, 2042 Broadway, Santa Monica, (310) 453-8311, through April 21. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Sculpture With a Twist: Liz Craft’s exhibition at Richard Telles Fine Art brings together sculptures previously exhibited in London and Linz, Austria. “Foxy Lady” and “Untitled (dwarfs)” present a humorously twisted rendition of “Snow White.”

The star of the artist’s refashioned fairy tale is “Foxy Lady,” a 6-foot-tall figure that Craft cast from her own body before adding the stylized head and oversize tail of a fox. A two-tone paint job accentuates the comic effect of the fiberglass manikin, its rusty red back and creamy white belly matching the colors of the animal’s fur.

Wearing only a placid expression, a leather collar and a long leash, she swirls like a lasso with her seven arms. The strangely serene sculpture resembles a child’s action figure rendered with the slickness of a high-end window display. It also recalls the denizens of the ancient Egyptian underworld, Hindu goddesses and Wild West legends, as well as contemporary sculptures by Charles Ray and Takashi Murakami.

A 21st century fox if ever there was one, Craft’s superhuman creature presides over six pudgy male dwarfs, none of whom even comes close to being 4 feet tall--Tyrolean hat included. Despite their frumpy demeanor, these painted plaster figures (which are prototypes for cast concrete lawn ornaments) are packed with personality.

A particularly mischievous one resembles Vincent van Gogh, Sigmund Freud and Sherlock Holmes. Another appears to be the offspring of a mean-spirited punk and a wise old rabbi. The rest are less animated. Like old folks, they seem to move slowly. Their faces suggest that ideas bounce off their thick skulls unless they’re simple and familiar.

Lacking a dwarf and leaving no room for Prince Charming, Craft’s version of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” plays fast and loose with the original. Rather than illustrating the classic fairy tale, her open-ended rendition updates the story to better fit the complex times in which we live.

* Richard Telles Fine Art, 7380 Beverly Blvd., L.A., (323) 965-5578, through May 5. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

3-D Paintings: Although Philip Guston (1913-1980) is probably the most famous postwar artist to have turned from abstraction to representation, Ralph Humphrey (1932-1990) did something similar, leaving behind the supposed refinement of abstract painting for the supposed accessibility of cartoon-inspired figuration. Today, Humphrey’s 3-D paintings of windows, facades and architectural elements look a lot fresher than Guston’s meaty images derived from comic strips.

At Daniel Weinberg Gallery, six terrific works made between 1976 and 1980 form the second installment of a two-part show. The first, in November, included largely monochromatic canvases from 1954 to 1967. The ones here trace the additive nature of Humphrey’s development, emphasizing the increasing worldliness of his art.

The earliest work is a boxy object whose front, sides, top and bottom are covered with dollops of modeling paste, so that the texture is rougher than stucco. Its palette--a super-saturated combination of blazing blues, delicate purples and sizzling reds--intensifies its physicality.

Measuring nearly 4 feet by 7 feet, the most recent painting has the presence of a set decoration for a live-action cartoon. Titled “Christmas Story,” its make-believe, candy-colored brickwork and opaque multi-paned window make architecture and cake frosting appear to be two sides of the same coin. They’re equally effective attempts to make the world more beautiful through decoration.

As a group, Humphrey’s humble yet sophisticated paintings combine the gritty heft of Marsden Hartley’s emblematic canvases and the visual sizzle of Georges Seurat’s pointillist landscapes. As physically substantial as they are abuzz with untouchable optical energy, their influence is on the rise.

* Daniel Weinberg Gallery, 6148 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., (323) 954-8425, through May 26. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Streamlined Triptychs: It’s often said that sculptures are not as popular as paintings because they take up too much space in a home. At Rosamund Felsen Gallery, three sculptures by Pauline Stella Sanchez resolve this problem playfully, compressing loads of spatial ambiguity into streamlined structures no bigger than an end table.

Pushing their relationship to furniture even further, the artist’s new works look like futuristic home decor. Each piece is a triptych made of two cabinet-shaped forms that stand on stainless steel legs and a third that sits on a functional lazy Susan. Although their flat tops tempt you to use them as extremely hip coffee tables, their sleek lines and monochromatic finishes endow them with the hands-off presence of Modern sculpture.

The sides of each of Sanchez’s works are where everything happens. Built of oddly angled pieces of wood that have been covered with many coats of luscious white paint, these fractured, quasi-Cubist compositions resemble architectural models. They also evoke Louise Nevelson’s relief sculptures. In some of their negative spaces Sanchez has placed neatly folded cloth sacks, glued idiosyncratic talismans and set abstract porcelain sculptures, whose small size is likewise belied by their visual dynamism.

In another gallery, she has hung three printed landscapes. One depicts a woman who appears to be walking on the sun, accompanied by a life-size version of one of the porcelain sculptures. The two others show trees uprooted by a tornado. Although Sanchez’s two-dimensional works add a narrative component, they are not as intriguing as her three-dimensional triptychs, which tell curious stories all their own.

* Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 828-8488, through April 21. Closed Sundays and Mondays.