Out of the darkness springs a message

Bank inaugurates its new space this month with a neatly matched pair of exhibitions concerned with issues of technology and perception.

Osman Khan’s “Unviewed,” in the main space, consists of a single glossy black monolith, 8 feet high, 4 feet across and 2 feet deep. At a glance, it’s not much to look at. Indeed, as the title suggests you may find your eyes slipping right past it in search of the art, as if it were a piece of the architecture.

Appearances can be deceiving, however. If you have a cellphone with a camera, hold it up, look through the lens and the front panel of the monolith springs to life. What looks like just a smooth sheet of black plastic is actually an infrared LED screen, its steady stream of imagery and text visible through any infrared-enabled device (a regular digital camera or a camcorder will also do).

It’s a bit of a gimmick, but a thoroughly effective one. The thrill of tapping into this invisible stream of information makes one feel like a child with a secret decoder ring, and the stream itself is mesmerizing.

The imagery is pixilated and vague and constantly moving, so it’s difficult to make out specifics; but the periodic appearance of certain national leaders suggests a political undertone. The flow is interspersed with phrases including the philosophical (“do I matter if you can’t see me?”), the banal (“watching the world cup”) and the enigmatic (my favorite: “and of course I am full of stars”). The programming is Web-based, which allows Khan to alter the stream at any time from his studio, so the content is ever changing.

Khan got his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering before earning his master of fine arts in UCLA’s design/media arts program, and it’s clear that technical novelty is an integral element of his vision. His last work at Bank, in the fall of 2004, involved a table rigged with an overhead projector that produced horizontal streams of color stemming like long shadows from a variety of movable objects (fruit and bottles and the like). Also interactive, that work brought a similar thrill.

In this case, the novelty has a deeper relevance, underscoring the mediated nature of contemporary experience (we connect to our friends, to the Internet, to our memories through our phones; why not to our art?) and pointing to the ways in which information -- and thus power -- is often concealed in the folds of technology, privileging those in possession of the right assortment of gadgets.

Martin Durazo’s show, “Bigger Than,” explores the mediation of perception from a different angle -- not technological and institutional, but chemical and self-imposed.

On a table at the center of the small, darkened room are five coaster-sized blobs of a clear, jellied material lighted from below in an alternating sequence of colors -- a hypnotic but perverse sort of party decor, given that the blobs are actually silicone implants.

On shelves around the perimeter are half a dozen small, centerpiece-like sculptures, each built around a revolving mirrored base that holds an assortment of novelty store knick-knacks -- a statue of the Buddha, a small glass cube with a tiny etched image suspended inside, key chains and hair clips -- as well as various items of drug paraphernalia. Surrounding each base is an intricate wreath of clips and rods, from which sprout several small magnifying glasses, all aimed down at the revolving objects.

Colored lights wound into each arrangement illuminate these objects, then refract off the mirrors and through the magnifying glasses to produce revolving patterns of color on the shelves and walls. The atmosphere is one of psychedelic solemnity, with each tightly wound piece embodying the extreme concentration and obsessive intricacy that tend to accompany drug culture rituals.

This scale is uncharacteristically small for Durazo but its intimacy suits him, revealing a delicacy that can be lost in his larger installations. These are strange, enthralling little objects that seem to cast a spell over the entire space, emulating the mystique of drug culture without falling prey to its cliches.

Bank, 125 W. 4th St., Los Angeles, (213) 458-9921, through July 8. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.bank-art.com

They’re subtle, yet absorbing

Pale, gauzy and relatively small, the paintings in Bay Area-artist Cynthia Ona Innis’ L.A. debut at Walter Maciel Gallery won’t jump off the walls to catch your attention. Once they have it, however, they’re likely to hold onto it.

They’re quiet, delicate, deeply absorbing paintings loosely constructed around a few basic elements: thin washes of pale pigment (pink, blue and brown, primarily); ballooning, net-like forms; and clusters of collaged satin lozenges, which float across the compositions like so many schools of fish. Painted on satin, they have a soft, loose, oceanic feel. Each has the air of an improvisation, but one driven by an organic internal logic, suggesting an intensely intuitive relationship between painter and materials.

Walter Maciel Gallery, 2642 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 839-1840, through July 15. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.waltermacielgallery.com

Photo installations that aim high

The group show at Carl Berg Gallery is an attention grabber, with three large-scale photographic installations that aim to make an impact.

Katrin Korfmann’s “Grey, 13 min., 9 sec., 2006” is the most austere of the lot. A 10-by-20-foot grid made up of 650 mostly sequential video stills taken at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, the work emphasizes the effect of the monument by cutting out the sky, outlying areas and any geographical feature that might lend a sense of perspective and presenting it simply as a dizzying sea of melancholy gray blocks peppered with meandering human figures -- one of whom, poignantly, carries a balloon.

Todd Gray’s “California Missions: Horse (Brown)” is a sculptural work involving a roughly 8-by-5-foot free-standing panel. The panel’s front is covered in mirror, which is startling if you come around the corner not expecting to be confronted with your own image.

The back, however, holds a greater surprise: a photograph of tree branches, bisected by the rear end of a taxidermy horse, standing upright, as if walking into the photograph. Gray showed other works from this series, each with a different breed of animal, in his survey at Cal State L.A.’s Luckman Gallery in late 2004, but this one -- stark, enigmatic and strangely elegant -- works particularly well on its own.

Brenna Youngblood’s installation consists of eight individual paintings hung in a dense cluster across the length of one wall. With the ink barely dry on her master of fine arts degree from UCLA and a UCLA Hammer Projects show already under her belt, Youngblood appears poised for success, and this is a fittingly impressive first postgraduate leap. Her style, which weaves fragments of photographs into thin washes of murky pigment, is audaciously distinctive and, presented in this quantity, makes a potent impression.

Carl Berg Gallery, 6018 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 931-6060, through July 1. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.carlberggallery.com

Distinctive styles come together

Mel Kadel and Travis Millard “live together in a log cabin in the Echo Park Hills of Los Angeles,” according to the press release for their dual exhibition at Richard Heller Gallery, sharing “ideas, meals, secrets, pens and the love for a cat named Nern.” It sounds idyllic and, judging from the satisfying harmony that the show manages to strike, seems to be a conducive environment.

Their styles are distinct but sympathetic, meshing comfortably in the crowded installation.

Millard, who publishes books and ‘zines through his own Fudge Factory Comics, has a thick line, crowded compositions and springy, full-bodied forms. Kadel’s drawings are wispy and delicate, filled with intricate patterns and complicated linear motifs, such as massive piles of twigs or coils of rope.

Millard’s works are acerbic and funny, occasionally a little gross and laced with political references. Kadel’s, many of which revolve around the same waiflike, long-haired little girl, have a fairy tale quality -- an allegorical air that’s inquisitive and slightly melancholic.

Both clearly occupy a lush imaginative world. The fists that Millard’s figures bury violently in one another’s faces in his “Fight Scene” series sprout from the ground like sunflowers in Kadel’s “Rolling With the Punches.” The masses of rope that swallow entire figures in several of Kadel’s drawings have their echo in Millard’s poignant “Hallway Mirror,” in which a young man looks into a mirror to see his face covered with leaves.

Richard Heller Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave. B-5A, Santa Monica, (310) 453-9191, through July 1. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.richardhellergallery.com