Massive Yet Delicate, Sculptures Inspire Thoughts of Fun

There’s no mistaking the industrial-strength power of Mark di Suvero’s massive sculpture squatting in the center of L.A. Louver Gallery’s main exhibition space. Made of I-beams and plates of stainless steel that have been torch-cut, spot-welded and bolted together with hardware as big as your fist and as thick as your wrist, this chunk of metal is so solid that it makes the walls around it look flimsy, like temporary backdrops designed to block out distractions so you can focus on what the sculptor has done with his rugged materials.

That’s when you begin to notice how graceful the playfully titled “Bodacious” is. What initially appears to be a compact clump of angled planes, colliding lines and broken curves becomes an extremely efficient orchestration of the way space expands and contracts when you view objects from different perspectives.

To walk around Di Suvero’s masterpiece is to feel as if you’re seeing at least four sculptures. From one angle, its towering girders, which are covered with a rusty patina, have the presence of tree branches. Suspended by a cable from the highest point is a shiny steel component whose circular form recalls a rope-and-tire swing.

Moving counterclockwise a quarter of the way around the sculpture causes its two vertical elements to line up like the sights of a rifle. But rather than creating the impression that you’re staring down a barrel, “Bodacious” pulls your eye upward. The thrust of the piece travels well beyond its actual dimensions, evoking the gravity-defying majesty of an Apollo rocket launch.

In the next view, space compresses as if it were an accordion. The beams rearrange themselves to resemble a window that opens onto an abstract landscape. Intimate and homey, this perspective reveals the sentimental side of Di Suvero’s work.

As if embarrassed by such sweetness, its fourth view evokes the monumental scale of freeway bridges--especially ones under construction, when their sleek forms seem to soar. No matter where you stand in relation to this generous sculpture, you feel as if you couldn’t be in a better position to see its carefully calibrated details.

Three smaller sculptures round out the gallery-bound component of the show. Like “Bodacious,” each changes dramatically as you circumnavigate it. But don’t stop here. Walk a block to the beach, where a 60-foot-tall sculpture stands on a grassy knoll.

Towering like a lighthouse, “Declaration” is a beacon of playfulness. Its silhouette, composed of a pair of tilted triangles, triggers memories of your first somersault. At once awkward and eager, Di Suvero’s unpretentious sculpture is a monument to the simple pleasures of kicking up your heels.

L.A. Louver Gallery, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955, through Nov. 24. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Singularity of Purpose: In some circles, Lee Bontecou is a legend, a gifted sculptor whose infrequently exhibited works are fiercely intelligent and fiendishly physical. In others she’s an enigma, a recluse with too much integrity to play careerist games.

In any case, public interest in the 70-year-old artist’s sculptures and drawings would have disappeared long ago if they didn’t have such a hold on the people who’ve seen them. Bontecou’s works lodge themselves in the mind’s eye. Like time-release capsules whose effects unfold in slow motion, they do their best work when you least expect it, long after you’ve stopped looking.

At Daniel Weinberg Gallery, a 40-year survey of Bontecou’s drawings attests to a clarity of vision and singularity of purpose rarely seen in contemporary art. Chronologically, the show divides into two halves: Fifteen drawings were made between 1961 and 1973; 12 date from 1987 through 1999.

Visually, the exhibition couldn’t be more consistent. Installed so point-blank comparisons can be made between early and recent pieces, it reveals that Bontecou’s art has grown in complexity and refinement without sacrificing any of its haunting power or elemental vigor.

In general, the earliest works are the most spartan. In one, Bontecou has rubbed soot into the weave of the canvas, creating a pair of ovals whose velvety blackness seems to open onto infinity. In others, the void functions like Pandora’s box: Out of its invisible depths emerge fanged orbs, exploding nebulae, mechanical organisms and sci-fi flowers.

In a sense, Bontecou’s recent works turn her early ones inside out. Rather than depicting mysterious things that seem to float out of the shadows, she thrusts viewers into deep space. Here, you find yourself on a tour of imaginary galaxies whose planets are covered with alien architecture and whose skies are traversed by abstract spacecraft, fabulous asteroids and glowing rays of energy.

A first-rate Surrealist more interested in subtlety than in shock, Bontecou is an artist who has made a virtue of longevity. If she continues along the path she has followed for the last four decades, her best works are yet to come.

Daniel Weinberg Gallery, 6148 Wilshire Blvd., (323) 954-8425, through Dec. 22. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Public and Personal: At a time when the rising number of solo debuts by recent art school graduates puts an undue premium on youth, it’s heartening to see an exhibition in which maturity plays an important role. At Michael Kohn Gallery, Michael Minelli’s first solo show is a sustained meditation on the nature of personal identity. By turns poignant and hilarious, it’s also a twisted trip through a landscape littered with 30 years’ worth of pop culture celebrities and news stories whose once powerful hold on the moment has faded into ghostly memories.

Imagine a scrapbook made by someone who feels as close to people in the news as he does to friends and family. This gives you an idea of the queasy intimacies that unfold in Minelli’s large collages, which consist of pictures snipped from magazines and newspapers alongside snapshots, postcards and other mementos.

In one, a baby picture of the artist shares space with images of Alan Greenspan, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, JonBenet Ramsey, Thomas Kincaid and John Pylypchuk. In another, Minelli’s sister Betty feeds her infant son Madison as Jacques Cousteau, Patrick Ewing, Francis Ford Coppola, Sheik Omar Rahkmon and Amy Sarkisian look on.

Under each picture, Minelli has printed an explanatory paragraph. If you’re unfamiliar with anyone, the handwritten sentences are informative. If you already know their stories, you begin to read the texts as editorials, openly subjective interpretations.

Color-coded lines link phrases from various captions, forming thematic categories that make sense of the mishmash of references. At one level, Minelli’s brand of image-and-text Conceptualism functions like a subway map. His obsessive diagrams let viewers navigate idiosyncratic paths through contemporary culture.

At another level, they are self-portraits. Each paints a picture of the artist as a person who is shaped--but not entirely defined--by his surroundings. One of the best things about Minelli’s mix-and-match works is that they give you the sense that he is as curious to discover what makes him him as you are to know what his art means.

Minelli’s sculptures, which resemble bastardized versions of Christmas tree ornaments, Faberge eggs, homemade birdfeeders and summer camp crafts, add a layer of hippie mysticism to the already rich mixture. Many are coated with corn, rice, dirt, plastic beads and photos. Most bear a family resemblance to the Watts Towers. More raw and less evolved than Minelli’s collages, they are talismans of a future filled with even more weirdness.

Michael Kohn Gallery, 8071 Beverly Blvd., (323) 658-8088, through Nov. 10. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Carnal Landscapes: Mind-blowing beauty is Sharon Ellis’ stock in trade. One look at any of her four new oils on canvas at Christopher Grimes Gallery is all it takes to make you think that she must have struck a bargain with the devil to be able to paint the way she does--with inhuman virtuosity and awesome command.

Whatever the case, Ellis’ fantastic landscapes are so far beyond extraordinary that just looking at them makes you feel as if you’ve died and gone to heaven. But these jewel-like pictures are too sexy to let viewers rest with the illusion of such otherworldly comfort.

Each of Ellis’ easel-scale paintings is inspired by a poem by Emily Bront, Hart Crane, Charlotte Smith or William Wordsworth. Each treats the visible world as a vehicle for stirring the passions and exciting the mind.

“Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee” is a siren song of seduction. In the foreground, blood-red vines form a serpentine pattern that entangles a cluster of morning glories whose brilliant tints dazzle like fireworks. In the background, desert foliage is silhouetted against a pastel sky.

“Garden Abstract” has the presence of a translucent hallucination, its solitary tree pulsating as if it were part of someone’s circulatory system. Depicting a field of luminous daffodils, a budding tree and a radiant sky, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” celebrates the serenity of solitude. In contrast, the lightning storm that roils in the crystalline moonlight of “Night’s Regent” reveals the deadly danger of treating nature as a pretty picture.

The electrifying energy embodied by Ellis’ sensuous paintings is too carnal to belong to any world but this one. Neither innocent nor benign, their ripe pleasures are so exquisitely satisfying that it’s not hard to imagine that trading your own soul for the experience is a deal to good to pass up.

Christopher Grimes Gallery, 916 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 587-3373, through Dec. 1. Closed Sundays and Mondays.