Each to her own nature

For about 20 years, it has been fashionable for curators to behave like artists. Sometimes the role reversal succeeds, resulting in fascinating installations that raise provocative questions about art’s relationship to life and a viewer’s place in it. But more often it fails, especially when individual works are treated as generic illustrations of broad themes.

At USC’s Fisher Gallery, “Contemporary Soliloquies on the Natural World” avoids this problem the old-fashioned way: by clearly distinguishing the work curators do from the works artists make. This lets the art speak for itself. It also gives viewers greater freedom to engage with the exhibition on their own terms.

Curators Max F. Schulz and Ariadni A. Liokatis have selected 36 paintings and three sculptures by five Los Angeles artists: Karen Carson, Merion Estes, Constance Mallinson, Margaret Nielsen and Takako Yamaguchi. Each has been allotted a separate gallery, where her works -- and viewers -- have plenty of breathing room.

Explanatory labels are kept to a minimum. No temporary walls herd visitors along pre-established paths. And the medium-size galleries have not been painted trendy tints; they remain plain old white.

In short, the curators never pretend to do more than straightforward organization, a task they perform with the refreshing humility of efficient librarians. They leave visual drama to the artists, whose complex compositions and wild hybridizations are all the stronger for being presented simply, in a setting unencumbered by forced comparisons and farfetched agendas.

Seven crisp landscapes by Yamaguchi occupy the first gallery. Each consists of an impressive inventory of Art Deco patterns and kimono fabric designs, including impossibly pointed waves, undulating curves, serpentine braids, compressed checkerboards and precisely ruled columns.

These geometric elements wrap around the edges of Yamaguchi’s paintings, forming proscenium arches that open onto stylized seascapes interspersed with lumpish landmasses and islands. Imagine Grant Wood as a theater designer who spent his formative years in 19th century Japan.

Yamaguchi’s largest painting, “Found, Lost and Then Found Again,” is less serene, more cataclysmic than her smaller, classically contained compositions. At 6 by 12 feet, it is a mural-scale extravaganza with bronze-leafed clouds that appear to be bursting out of its decorative frame. Chaos never looked more elegant.

Through the door to the left of this image can be seen several of Estes’ even more chaotic panels. Each of these 10 big pictures is a dizzying collision of extravagantly patterned fabrics onto which the artist has splashed, sprayed and stained various mixtures of oil and acrylic. Printed images of flowers, butterflies, blackbirds, dragonflies and snowflakes swirl around plaids, polka dots and paisleys, not to mention striped, tie-dyed and leopard-skin patterns.

In less talented hands, such everything - plus - the - kitchen-sink mixtures would be a mess. But Estes manages to make disparate elements work in concert, forming a renegade order that is neither logical nor harmonious yet makes strange sense.

The artist’s three sculptures -- constructed of peacock feathers, yarn and plastic goose decoys, among other organic and manufactured items -- lack the funky verve of her collaged paintings, which are the show’s high point. “Red Tide” looks like a punk version of Sharon Ellis’ fantastic landscapes. “SkyBlueSky” makes odd bedfellows of Sigmar Polke’s screen-printed cheekiness and Polly Apfelbaum’s cartoon sensuality. And “Toxic Depths” combines the seething vitality of a bucket of primordial stew with the supercharged kick of a beaker of synthetic hallucinogens.

To see the rest of the exhibition, you must double back through Yamaguchi’s gallery. Carson’s five paintings, measuring 12, 14 and 21 feet long, are all tempestuous motion -- swift, sweeping gestures that dramatize the power and fury of the wind.

“Spring in Big Timber” depicts the landscape of the American West as a sea of swirling whirlpools, turbulent currents and choppy riptides. “Red/Green Storm” adds violent fireworks, leafy silhouettes and wispy meteorological symbols. “Winter Light” is the most sophisticated. From some angles, this cinematic expanse of tangled lines seems to embody a moment of utter stillness, as on a winter day so cold the sunlight might almost have frozen. But from other perspectives, the tranquillity dissolves into flickering puffs, chilling gusts or menacing gales.

Carson uses ink and fabric dye to paint with calligraphy brushes on tautly stretched sheets of silk. This gives her huge, horizontal works the intimacy and immediacy of drawings, an impression she amplifies by painting abstract patterns around their borders.

Geometric patterns return to play a symbolic role in Nielsen’s nine page-size paintings in the next gallery. Most of these gem-like oils on panel feature dozens of realistically rendered birds or fish spinning through space to form circles, spheres and spirals as well as the infinity symbol. These shapes are echoed by imaginary galaxies Nielsen has painted in star-spangled backgrounds of velvety blackness, which are often adorned with a well-placed comet or two. The surfaces are seductive, but the symbolism is blunt, leaving too little to the imagination.

Mallinson’s five paintings are more realistic and also more surreal. From afar, each resembles a bird’s-eye view of a panoramic landscape whose blue skies, towering mountains, pristine forests, beautiful meadows, stunning waterfalls and rushing rivers are more perfect than anything in nature.

Close up, the fantasies become nightmares. Each painting disintegrates into a claustrophobic barrage of images lifted from tourist brochures and travel advertisements.

Snow covers just about everything in “Four Seasons -- Winter.” This allows Mallinson to create a picture that looks seamless but is in fact so overcrowded with skiers, skaters and outdoor adventurers that there’s no room for solitude, much less communion with the wide-open world.

Likewise, “Ad Arcadia” presents no fewer than 10 gorgeous sunsets (and even more planes flying into them) as parts of a highlights-only world tour. The planet becomes a giddy thrill ride of instant gratification, with no room for slow-building narratives or layered experiences such as anticipation and recollection.

One of the best things about “Contemporary Soliloquies” is that it invites just such experiences. Walking from one gallery to the next and viewing one artist’s work while still under the influence of another’s creates expansive possibilities and adds satisfying richness to a visit.

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‘Contemporary Soliloquies on the Natural World’

Where: USC Fisher Gallery, 823 Exposition Blvd., Los Angeles

When: Noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays

Ends: Jan. 21

Admission: Free

Contact: (213) 740-4561