Group Show Mixes the Banal and the Beautiful

Of all the countries represented in this year’s L.A. International Biennial, Germany is clearly the powerhouse when it comes to photography. An outstanding group show of German photographers at Mark Moore Gallery outlines some of the best work of the last decade and plants the seeds of what could be a great museum exhibition. The work is distinguished by its confident fusion of resolute banality and sharp visual beauty. The sensibility is cool, yet subtly emotional; the colors muted and wintry.

Nearly all the works relate in some way to issues of space, architecture and urban development. A 1991 photograph by Andreas Gursky depicts an assembly line in an automobile factory: a dense web of sterile whites and plastic blues and yellows in the monumental scale (51/2 feet by 61/2 feet) that Gursky has become known for. A smaller image of a plowed field is equally stunning--rich, burgundy colored dirt, an ashy green horizon and a barely colored sky--and demonstrates Gursky’s facility for capturing the logic of large spaces.

In a series of four photographs depicting piles of rubble from a demolished building--compositions that, with the white sky behind, are nearly monochromatic--Oliver Boberg evokes an array of subtle tones and textures. His discriminating affinity for concrete also comes across in a strangely beautiful piece called “ Aussichtsplattform ,” which depicts nothing but the edge of an empty parking lot and the line of spindly trees behind it, but which is one of the most compelling works in the show.

Photographs by Thomas Ruff and Gerhard Richter present eerily quiet urban landscapes. Ruff’s “Haus 6 I” (1988-98) is something like a tri-colored flag with a strip of white sky at the top, a periwinkle apartment building stretching across the middle and green grass at the bottom. Richter’s “Documeta IX” (1992) is a cityscape interrupted by a characteristic smudge of swirled black and white oil paint applied to the surface of the photograph.

Candida Hofer’s “Banque National de Paris” (1998) is one of the only interior shots in the show. It depicts a grand but nearly empty reading room composed in an elegant palette of aqua, mahogany and black.

The more intimate images of Wolfgang Tillmans and Thomas Struth embody the same cool beauty as the show’s many landscapes. Tillman’s is represented by several still-lifes, the most unusual and striking of which is a completely black field punctuated only by the round white glint of a diamond ring. If this and Tillman’s other arrangements of fruit and vegetables allude to the vein of sexuality beneath the dry sensibility that dominates contemporary German photography, Struth’s unapologetically beautiful image of pink blossoms on a newly blooming tree gives proof of its heart.

Mark Moore Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 453-3031, through Aug. 25. Closed Sunday and Monday.

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Emotional Honesty: An exhibition of Central and Eastern European artists at Koplin Gallery affords a welcome opportunity to peek outside the mantle of art school-generated discourse that shapes most of the work shown in L.A. and New York and experience art that emerges from a different source. If some of the work on view seems out of step with the primary concerns of contemporary art as we think it (if it seems dated, in other words), its high degree of skill and emotional honesty more than compensates for that shortcoming.

Slovakian artist Katrina Vavrov’s mixed-media prints are filled with dreamy and circus-like imagery--lonely figures, boats, animals, all loosely rendered--set against fields of soft color. Her gracefully expressionistic style feels instinct-driven and vaguely therapeutic, though in a universal rather than egotistical sense. Russian artist Marina Richterov’s etchings are rendered with impeccable shading and a lovely sense of line. The fanciful characters that populate the pictures exude a mischievous sparkle that recalls Leonardo da Vinci’s women.

The majority of the exhibition is taken up by the drawings and prints of Czechoslovakian artist Oldrich Kulhanek, who, according to his bio, has the curious distinction of designing all of the new Czech currency. His hand is certainly steady enough for the job: The nude figures that fill his works are nearly perfectly rendered.

Several of his prints depict a solitary male figure while others convey tangles of bodies, male and female, locked in the sort of fierce physical struggle that animates Baroque sculpture and painting. In each, the subtle complexities of musculature and perspective are masterfully conveyed.

The most powerful of the works are three drawings that reconfigure the biblical trials of Job as a series of gestures and convulsions undergone by a single male figure. Applied over a lithographed field of soft gray, which the figure desperately reaches beyond in places, the drawing is precise but almost painfully emotional. Parts of the paper are dirty and wrinkled; pencil marks are so deep and forceful in places that they nearly break through. While the prints come across as convincingly expressive exercises, these drawings seem containers of undiluted passions and frustrations.

It might be fair to ask whether naturalistic figure drawing, which has such a long and established tradition, is capable of offering anything new to a contemporary audience. Kulhanek’s drawings should remind us that the messages from which we have the most to learn are not always the new ones.

Koplin Gallery, 464 N. Robertson Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 657-9843, through Sept. 1. Closed Sunday and Monday.

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Small Is Big: Despite the homogenizing tendencies of globalization, one principle difference between Europe and the United States remains: Nearly everything is smaller in Europe than it is here. A group exhibition of Dutch artists at Remba Gallery--titled “From Holland: Small Is Beautiful”--flaunts this difference, but tactfully hints that it may have less to do with physical mass than attitude.

All of the works in the show are indeed small, though not unusually so. What makes their smallness distinctive (or “beautiful”) is their unassuming simplicity and spontaneity. Jan Smejkal’s 4-inch-by-6-inch works--in which thin, gold lines entwine like strands of spaghetti on black paper--are not exceptional drawings but are rather pleasantly enthusiastic. Sonia Rynhout’s small, crowded word paintings and Armando’s colorful oil-stick abstractions both have a glean of childish exuberance that quells one’s questions about whether their unsophisticated techniques are intentional or incidental.

Several of the works allude to the operations of nature. In his “From Earth” series, Herman de Vries rubs small spots of pigment from the Earth directly onto large sheets of paper to create simple, surprisingly lucid accounts of the land he’s traversed to collect his materials. In each of his works, Jan van Munster burns one small geometric symbol onto a 27-inch-by-20-inch sheet of paper. Floating in such an expanse of white, each rust-colored shape seems a concentration of some natural force. Ewerdt Hilgemann makes use of another natural force--air--to implode his stainless-steel cubes (sucking the interior air out of each box) and create unique, spontaneous folds in the steel.

All of the artists in the show use basic materials and essential processes to create human-scaled work. None of it is astounding, but all of it is refreshingly approachable.

Remba Gallery, 462 N. Robertson Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 657-1101, through Sept. 1. Closed Sunday and Monday.

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Rich Colors: German photographer Hans-Christian Schink’s large, architectural images operate like Color-Field paintings. Each photograph depicts, parallel to the picture plane, the wall of a nondescript industrial building.

In several of the works, this wall takes up nearly the whole frame, allowing for only a strip of dirt or grass at the bottom and, in some, a strip of sky at the top. The others depict complete buildings--barns or storage units, it seems--floating on seas of grass and surrounded by flat white skies.

The colors are selective but bright and delicious. The grass is commercial green and the buildings are lemon yellow, turquoise, indigo, white, gray and tan.

The textures are also limited. Most are corrugated metal with either horizontal or vertical ridges. One is metal layered over with a chain-link fence. One is brick, giving the work a sense of concentrated Minimalism.

Schink’s photographs are resonant, if extremely unsentimental. Refined to a sort of photographic perfection, they demonstrate the aesthetic potential of large-format and color techniques.

Paul Kopeikin Gallery, 138 North La Brea Ave., L.A., (323) 937-0765, through Aug. 31. Closed Sunday and Monday.