Life Shapes Clay in Georges Jeanclos’ Sculptures

Last summer, Frank Lloyd Gallery staged a breathtaking introductory show of terra-cotta sculptures by Georges Jeanclos (1933-1997). This summer, the gallery follows up with another, equally astonishing.

By the time Jeanclos was 13 and beginning an apprenticeship with a sculptor, he had already had an excessive share of fear and danger for one lifetime. His family, French Jews threatened with deportation under the Vichy regime, had gone into hiding, first in a small village, then in the woods nearby. Jeanclos emerged from this nightmare with remarkable talent and direct contact with life’s extremes. His mature work evolved from his experiences during those formative years, his encounter with Etruscan terra-cotta funerary sculpture, and his immersion in Jewish worship and study.

What persisted, in his faith and in his work, was, in his words, a “certain transcendent image of the individual.” The figures in Jeanclos’ sculptures bear expressions of complete calm, whether seeking shelter in a cocoon of makeshift rags or sitting, Buddha-like, in meditation. They always appear in some sort of enclosure, their vulnerability tempered by a wrapping of blankets (the “Dormeurs” or Sleepers), a slightly harder, vessel-like shell (the “Urnes”) or broad, wave-textured cloak (the Japanese-influenced “Kamakura” series).

Jeanclos forced a weathering process on his clay by hurling it in slabs onto the ground, where it would stretch thin, crack and pick up stray bits of debris. His textures speak of honest imperfection. They are often crusty, parched, but occasionally fluid, smoothly striated like the waves raked into Japanese dry gardens. Throughout, the clay doubles as the stuff of life and its humble protection.

In “Couple Dormeur” (circa 1977), two figures huddle in a primal bed, their intimacy and unity more than compensating for their shabby coverings. In another piece, the head of an urn figure emerges from its rippled, fissured sheath cradled in its own hands. Jeanclos’ figures are ever striving to stay warm, to keep in the spiritual heat. It’s this soul protection, as much as the insulation of the body, that preserves life. Jeanclos knew that survival was more than a matter of just keeping the breath going. It meant defying forces of violence, coarseness and disunity, countering with tenderness, grace, delicacy, beauty. For all of its fragility, Jeanclos’ work epitomizes that magnificent defiance.

Frank Lloyd Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 264-3866, through Aug. 24. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Sculptor Finds the Mystery in Reality

Dorothy closes her eyes on the familiar domesticity of Aunt Em’s farm, only to open them to the radiance of Oz. Stepping into their grandfather’s wardrobe, the children in C.S. Lewis’ classic tales suddenly find themselves in another, more marvelous world. Is it possible that these characters were transported to alternate worlds, or did they simply tap into new ways of regarding existing reality, recognizing its inherent enchantment, drama, intrigue?

Rebecca Niederlander’s creepily seductive work at 2211 Solway Jones spurs a similar train of thought. Her sculptures bridge pedestrian reality and its wondrous underbelly of fear and fantasy. Working in plastic, porcelain, foam, cardboard and various forms of lighting, she rubs the magical up against the mundane. Sparks don’t always fly, but the work generates a consistent, low-level buzz of curiousness.

“Treehouse,” for instance, hangs from the ceiling like a Frisbee-style light fixture, common enough in a modern home or office. But instead of hosting a bulb that illuminates a given space, the fixture disgorges a mass of pale roots, thick, gnarly knobs and long, dangling strands shaped of modeling compound. A spray of fiber optic lights twinkles kitschily within, while LEDs tucked inside the tangle lend the roots a more evocative, burnished glow. It’s an odd, subterranean vision brought to eye level.

“Nitelite,” a group of 10 tabletop sculptures, presents a similar disjunction. The nightlight’s primary task is to eliminate mystery. These amplify it. Each blue plastic dome houses a miniature landscape of spores and blossoms, tendrils, tresses and fine, curling cilia. A small aperture atop each dome allows us to peer into these tableaux (again made of modeling compound), and the lights within make the shapes visible also as haunting shadows on the domes’ exterior walls. There’s a childlike charm to the forms, which look as if they were shaped from Play-Doh, but that innocence competes with a more threatening, nightmarish quality. “The wood is full of shining eyes / The wood is full of creeping feet / The wood is full of tiny cries / You must not go to the wood at night,” reads the Henry Treece poem upon which this work is based.

We can never see things purely, but only as filtered through our hopes and anxieties. Niederlander reinforces this notion of perception as tempered and limited by letting us see the microcosmic realms in her work only incompletely, from a distance, through tiny viewing holes or distorting lenses. Where our senses leave off, though, our imagination is more than happy to take over.

Gallery 2211 Solway Jones, 2211 N. Broadway, L.A., (323) 276-9662, through Aug. 11. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Portraits That Dignify the People We Overlook

Dan McCleary’s portraits are the products of long stares at people in places generally dismissed with a quick glance--counter help at the doughnut shop, fast food cashiers, strangers in an elevator. McCleary encourages our prolonged gaze into his subjects’ faces by deflecting it off of everything else in the scene. The men and women in his modestly elegant new paintings at Michael Kohn Gallery have the presence and self-possession of true individuals, while their settings are reduced to generalities.

In “Marta,” for instance, a woman stands behind a counter with arms folded. It’s not clear what type of business is transacted here, for McCleary sands down all the details that would tell us. The counter looks like gray Formica, the wall behind her is a standard beige. A brochure holder on the counter contains generic stand-ins of solid blue and red. A corner of the wall sign identifying the company frames Marta on one side, and a rubber plant peeks in from the other. McCleary deftly establishes an institutional feel to the place, painting every surface slippery smooth with anonymity. Marta, though, breathes--a present-day counterpart to Manet’s woman working the bar at the Folies Bergere. Manet, Hopper and Vermeer are historical mentors whom McCleary admires for their restraint. His own work has a pronounced stillness, a grace that owes as much to his muted color harmonies as to the introspective demeanor of his subjects. McCleary seems to have pushed the pause button on these young men and women, and captured them in a moment of interiority. Gazes between figures in a painting never lock. A cashier looks intently at his customer, but she lowers her eyes to the vague space between them.

In “Level Seven,” a man and woman stand at either side of an elevator car, each accompanying a folder or package to be delivered. She holds the door open and they both stare straight out at us, as if awaiting our move. These are ordinary situations, but McCleary’s affectionate touch makes it clear that the concept of ordinariness has no bearing when it comes to people. Each has a dignity that McCleary more than ably captures.

Michael Kohn Gallery, 8071 Beverly Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 658-8088, through Aug. 16. Closed Sunday and Monday.