An object lesson in Americana

Mungo Thomson’s last exhibition at Margo Leavin Gallery two years ago was a promising but fragmented affair, containing many clever moments but few lasting epiphanies. It revealed Thomson to be a Conceptual artist of great intelligence and humor, but one who had yet to reach the full potential of his ideas.

It’s not a point that one should be expected to reach too quickly -- not if those ideas have depth. But Thomson’s current show at the same gallery suggests that he’s happily on his way.

The work takes more or less the same form as that in the earlier show, with an even mix of drawings and objects (some personally or collaboratively fabricated, others mass-produced). It embodies many of the same attributes, including a playful sense of humor, a crisp visual style and a fastidious, even virtuosic, talent for seamless imitation.

In the last show, for example, Thomson handcrafted a dozen or so standard-issue yellow pencils and commissioned the production of several dozen lead-crystal beer bottles. Here, his fabrications include an assortment of wind chimes, a series of earthenware jugs branded with the Jack Daniel’s whiskey logo (these produced in collaboration with Juan Guillermo Vega) and several dozen photographically realistic drawings.

What distinguishes this show from the last, however, is the consistency and complexity of its thematic through-line, which might broadly be described as an exploration of Americana. Behind all the work, one senses, is an abiding fascination with those objects that have come to define some aspect of American culture. Thomson reproduces these objects with fetishistic accuracy but generally tweaks one element in such a way as to dislodge the assumptions they typically inspire, or else sets unlikely objects in relation to one another.

Although the breadth of this theme allows for a good deal of free-associative rambling -- and this rambling is one of the show’s pleasures -- several distinct strands do emerge, deftly interwoven.

Many of these begin with the protest culture of the 1960s. There is an American flag made of denim and flown upside down, for example; a drawing of the Pentagon levitating several stories off the ground (an allusion to a peace demonstration organized by the Yippies); and several drawings of folk musicians and folk music paraphernalia, such as a “Zimmerman for President” bumper sticker and a Bob Dylan / Grateful Dead backstage pass. This strand weaves into drawings of Ecuadorean folk art (much of which happens to be jug-shaped) and into drawings of American jug bands -- which then leads to all those Jack Daniel’s jugs, as well as to a series of hand-woven rugs emblazoned with the Jack Daniel’s logo and to several drawings of John Belushi chugging the stuff.

And it goes on like this, winding around to encompass allusions to the Ramones, Van Halen, Syd Barrett, the death-metal band Deicide, the guy who helped fabricate the jugs and the Saraguro Indians of Ecuador. Also incorporated is a slide show of snapshots taken by strangers at the top of the Empire State Building and a series of pinatas fabricated in the likeness of President Bush.

Throughout, one begins to sense Thomson moving toward a new level of complexity, employing his talent for virtuosic reproduction as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. The connections speak for themselves.

Margo Leavin Gallery, 812 N. Robertson Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 273-0603, through Oct. 16. Closed Sunday and Monday.

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A ghostly presence still felt

Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta -- a ghostly presence in the art world since she fell from a Manhattan high-rise window to an early death in 1985 -- has been especially visible in recent months, since a major retrospective of her work, organized by the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., began its tour of Eastern cities in July. Closer to home, and on a much smaller scale, one can find her haunting the Griffin Contemporary as well. Her 1980 film, “Keane College Volcano New Jersey,” is screening in the back room, alongside a contemporary body of work in which her influence is palpable -- that of L.A.-based artist Liza Ryan.

The film, which portrays a pile of rocks in the shape of Mendieta’s body rigged with tiny volcanoes at the breasts and vulva, is conceptually evocative but visually disappointing. The erosion of the film stock and an unfortunate (if necessary) transfer to DVD seem to have left the image drearily murky and difficult to make out.

The half-dozen mostly black-and-white photo-based works and one video installation that make up Ryan’s portion of the exhibition are by contrast crisp, clear and elegant. Her primary subject, like that of Mendieta, is the female body in nature (whether or not it’s her own isn’t specified). The tone isn’t volatile, however, but unabashedly sensual -- even romantic.

In one work, we see the back of a woman’s head against the mottled canopy of a tree, her swirling brown locks echoing the twisted contours of its branches. In another, far more intimate in scale, we find a slender bough wrapping tenderly, like the hand of a lover, around the inner elbow of a bare arm. In a third (the only color image), a bare torso stretches like a sun-dappled sand dune from one side of the frame to the other. This elegance comes at the expense of the politics underlying the work of Mendieta and other feminist artists of her generation. This is quiet, introspective work, more concerned with the sensation of leaves brushing against the flesh of the forearm than the subjugation of the female body or historical representations of “The Goddess.” Clearly, however, there is room in the world for both. If you leave the show longing for a bigger taste of Mendieta’s retrospective in Washington, it is not for any shortcoming on the part of Ryan; her images hold their own.

Griffin Contemporary, 2902 Nebraska Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 586-6886, through Oct. 16. Closed Sunday and Monday.

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The still life, rearranged

The photographs in Laura Letinsky’s exhibition at Bank Gallery have the heavy, silent, still quality of a grandmother’s closed-up sitting room or an old greenhouse full of rare orchids. Their subject matter is banal -- cups, saucers, candy wrappers, pastry crumbs and the like, scattered across cloth-covered tables. Yet they have a rarefied air, suggestive of old Northern European still-life paintings.

It’s a precise tone, painstakingly cultivated and duly evocative. The compositions are large, spacious and suffused with a sense of conspicuous evacuation. The colors have a cake-frosting sweetness but feel strangely embalmed, as if drained of organic energy.

Begun in 1997, this is a body of work at its peak of refinement, far from spontaneous but endowed with an almost classical grace.

In the back room of the gallery, an interactive installation by Osman Khan explores the same theme -- the still-life tradition -- with a technological twist that offers an altogether different set of pleasures. Here, a table scattered with wine bottles and assorted fruits and vegetables is bathed in the light of a projection, which is programmed to extend the color of each object like a long shadow down the length of the table.

Viewers are invited to rearrange the objects at will, which can be a giddy experience, especially because your hand creates its own wave when passed over the table and turns the surface into a swirling pool of color. The effect is enchanting.

Bank, 400 S. Main St., Los Angeles, (213) 621-4055, through Oct. 13. Closed Sunday and Monday.

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Pastel snapshots of Latino L.A.

In setting out to create the four new works in his exhibition at Patricia Correia Gallery, John Valadez set himself up for a major challenge. Three of the works are contemporary street scenes, presumably in L.A.; the fourth is a moderately populated seascape. All are realistically portrayed, panoramic in scale (up to 38 by 100 inches) and rendered entirely in pastel.

None of these elements is unusual in its own right, but they make for awkward bedfellows. Pastel is a soft, full-bodied medium given to natural landscapes and nudes. It hardly seems up to the frenetic detail that fills these sidewalks and shop windows.

It’s also a traditionally intimate medium, historically employed in small-scale sketches and studies, informal portraits and domestic interiors. These works, however, are immense -- although not, one might add, especially monumental. Indeed, considering their scale, the scenes -- snapshot-like slices of everyday life in Latino L.A. -- are fairly banal.

To the extent that it’s possible to reconcile such disparate elements, Valadez pulls it off admirably. His command of the medium is superb, producing full, solid forms and luminous colors. The compositions are filled with light -- whether the thin, buttery light of the sun at noon, the sordid yellow of an after-hours shop window or the fiery orange of late-night neon. A muralist’s sense of scale and perspective holds them together. The result, in Valadez’s able hands, is surprisingly cohesive.

Patricia Correia Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., E-2, Santa Monica, (310) 264-1760, through Oct. 9. Closed Sunday and Monday.