Making a collective statement

Oakland-based artist Stephen Hull has been carving out a curious curatorial niche for himself in recent years, orchestrating large-scale relay-style collaborative projects among artists from various disciplines.

For the first, in 1997, he invited 31 visual artists to each create a single artwork, then randomly assigned those works to 31 writers, who were asked to produce a piece of writing in response.

The pairs weren’t introduced until the opening of the exhibition -- hence the title, “Blind Date.” The second project, “Song Poems” in 2002, staged a similar operation among artists, writers and musicians, resulting in a performance, a book and a set of three CDs.

For his current project, “AB OVO,” Hull began by soliciting 19 artists (including Mike Kelley, Mary Kelly, Jim Shaw, Martha Rosler and Bruce Yonemoto) to take the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2TM, a personality test used by the court system to identify and evaluate psychological disorders. Each test, customized to the settings used in child custody cases, produced a personality profile, which Hull then handed over (anonymously) to 19 writers, asking them to write a children’s story based on the character that emerged from the profile.

These stories were then given to 19 different artists, who were asked -- you guessed it -- to produce illustrations. The results were published in book form as well as on a lovely website (www.abovoproject.com), and the artwork is on view in person at Arena 1, along with sample copies of the profiles.

It is a clever and logistically ambitious undertaking -- as uneven as any large-scale potluck is bound to be, but an entirely entertaining exercise nonetheless.

The stories are a mixed lot. Most have a tentative, rambling quality, as if unsure of what to do with themselves in this unusual context. The question of audience -- of whether they were to be written for children or for adults about children -- appears never to have been resolved. Most of the stories waver awkwardly between the two, sounding vaguely uncomfortable assuming a child’s voice.

The art, though extremely varied stylistically, is more consistently compelling, which makes the exhibition worth a visit even if you see the book or website beforehand. Especially memorable are a charming series of Polaroids by Isabell Heimerdinger following the antics of a playful, pigtailed little girl; Marnie Weber’s characteristically fantastical landscapes (also photographs); and Hiroki Otsuka’s crisp, cartoonish paintings of a grouchy fish gazing longingly toward the world beyond his tank. (Otsuka’s work accompanies Terri Phillips’ “Jitney Junior in a Brave New World,” the only one of the stories to be written in poetry form and one of the most charming.)

Ambitious though the project is, it would be great to see it taken one step further. The best of these stories -- Trinie Dalton’s wonderful “The Wookie Saw My Nipples: A Week in the Life of Princess Leia” (the only story in the collection to employ a child’s voice convincingly), Ben Ehrenreich’s bizarre but tragic “The Sad Story of Rhonda the Rhinoceros,” and Benjamin Weissman’s hilariously weird and irreverent “Hairy Prince” -- could be made into books in their own right, with a full set of images (by Aaron Noble, Tanya Haden and Scott Cassidy, respectively) rather than the tantalizing handful that appear here.

The most gratifying thing about the project is the lively sense of community it evokes. In a world dominated by solo shows and individuated statements, it’s nice to be reminded of the pleasures of interaction and collaboration.

Arena 1, 3026 Airport Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 397-7456, through Feb. 11. Closed Sunday through Tuesday.

Gray anatomy with color, energy

“Sequins and Skeletons” is the title of Miriam Wosk’s rich and dizzyingly colorful exhibition at Billy Shire Fine Arts and an apt description for what you’ll find there. Working in paint, pastel and collage on paper, Wosk begins most of these works with some element of anatomical imagery, whether human or animal. Then she smothers it in veil upon veil of floral ornament and pattern, creating a sort of gothic, hyper-decorative Surrealism that is as invigorating for the imagination as it is for the eye.

“Tome 5. Pl. 68,” one of a series of paintings executed on a collection of old anatomical prints, resembles nothing so much as a birthday party erupting from the folds of a uterus, with curling ribbons of color spewing from a spot just behind the clitoris and cheerful bursts of confetti suspended on each side. “Incandescent Matter,” a spectacular work about three times larger, depicts a pelvic bone, sensually rendered in pearly shades of white, pink and yellow, buried in a cloud of pink roses like some lavishly perverse hospital bouquet.

The method appears to be one of controlled improvisation, and the tone is rather audaciously celebratory. Faced with the wonders of biology -- of bone structures, organs, musculature and circulatory systems -- Wosk’s impulse is to dive in and play it up, adding her own energetic spin.

In the paintings made from prints, for instance, Wosk’s motifs are dynamic and sprightly. They spring from the staid, gray anatomical forms like eager visitors to an exotic landscape, darting around bones and organs, stretching web-like across the surface of muscles or bouncing off the forms altogether, into the margin of the page.

Wosk has been making and showing art in Los Angeles for more than 25 years, and one senses the confidence of experience throughout this show. Her style, judging from reproductions of earlier works in the catalog, has grown denser and heavier over time, but also more passionate and more original.

Minimalism and restraint have their value, but there is a wonder to encountering a work that’s been pored over as thoroughly and as lovingly as these. Charged with the warmth of the human hand, they’re wonderfully generous objects.

Billy Shire Fine Arts, 5790 Washington Blvd., Culver City, (323) 297-0600, through Feb. 25. Closed Monday and Tuesday. www.billyshirefinearts.com

Walking into a video crossfire

The concept behind Marco Brambilla’s “Sync,” a three-channel video installation at Christopher Grimes Gallery, is neither complicated nor especially original. But the presentation is smart, succinct and unsettlingly effective.

The installation consists of three large screens hanging in a roughly triangular configuration, each featuring a short, synced loop of densely edited film footage. At the apex of the triangle, we see a montage of movie theater audiences, gazing into the camera as if watching a movie; on the two opposite screens, a montage of fight scenes and a montage of sex scenes -- all progressing at a rate of several shots per second. Overlaying all three is a violently percussive audio montage.

The effect, as one steps into this triangle, is something like being caught in the crossfire of invisible machine guns. Pinned between the eager gaze of the audience members and the violent spectacles they appear to be consuming, the viewer is inevitably absorbed in the exchange. The rhythms are so intoxicating that it’s decidedly difficult to walk away.

A video artist with mainstream Hollywood credentials -- he directed the 1993 futuristic cop flick “Demolition Man,” among others -- Brambilla knows whereof he speaks, which is surely part of what makes the work so effective. Less a commentary on media violence than a distillation of its effects, “Sync” is as satisfying as it is alarming, and surely more alarming for being so satisfying.

Christopher Grimes Gallery, 916 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 587-3373, through Feb. 26. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.cgrimes.com

Aged prints of creatures long ago

Laszlo Layton’s “Pictorial Zoology” series consists of 36 lovingly crafted cyanotype prints depicting creatures and objects long forgotten in the musty dioramas and vaults of natural history museums. The smew, the rock hyrax, the potoroo, the limpopo bushbuck, Temmick’s tragopan, Prince Rudolf’s blue bird of paradise -- their names have a poetic exoticism reminiscent of 19th century expeditions down the Nile and Amazon rivers.

Photographed individually against a neutral backdrop, mostly at close range with a shallow depth of field, and labeled with a careful script, they appear much as they would have in an old natural history monograph. The prints, made using one of the earliest photographic processes, have an aged, dusty look.

Cyanotypes are typically bright blue in color, thanks to the nature of the chemicals with which the paper is treated, but Layton has subjected these works to extensive bleaching, tinting and, in some cases, painting. So the tones vary considerably, from the typical blue to gray, beige and orange.

The most striking thing about this quiet, quirky project is the soulful quality that Layton manages to draw from the animals -- many of which are not only long dead and stuffed but actually extinct. The regal egret, the contemplative antelope, the anxious raccoon, the haughty lemur, the pair of rambunctious river otters and the melancholic monkeys who’ve clearly seen their share of tragedy -- each seems to reach across history to address the viewer personally, as if all too aware that its time has long passed.

Peter Fetterman Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave. A7, Santa Monica, (310) 453-6463, through March 11. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.peterfetterman.com