The mighty -- out of the humble

In a world of websites, airport lobbies and art fairs, it’s easy to misinterpret -- or simply ignore -- art’s relationship to place. If globalization has opened up the possibility for unprecedented diversity, it’s also tended to funnel that diversity down a limited number of avenues, many of them bland, resulting in the perpetuation of a safe, relatively neutral international style: art made with more or less the same materials, according to the same rules, shown in the same kinds of venues. The murky and difficult but inevitably rich question of place is reduced to a biographical detail or a tag on the wall.

With Nigerian-based artist El Anatsui’s spectacular found-object sculptures, however -- a traveling exhibition that is at UCLA’s Fowler Museum through Aug. 26 -- there is no question: Art and place are literally inextricable.

“Art grows out of each particular situation,” he states in an interview in the exhibition catalog, “and I believe that artists are better off working with whatever their environment throws up.”

In the case of this recent work, it’s bottle caps, milk tins, steel graters and aluminum newspaper printing plates. (In the past, he has worked with wood as well.)

Collected in vast numbers and assembled with seemingly infinite patience and the help of numerous assistants, these humble materials -- each loaded with cultural and sociopolitical significance -- are transformed into elegant objects of near-talismanic potency.

They engage the terms of international contemporary art discourse without surrendering the integrity of local concerns or downplaying the complexity of the relationship between the two.

All the works revolve on what one piece of wall text -- for “Wastepaper Basket,” a massive container made from crumpled obituary page printing plates -- calls “the rising problem of waste transformation in nations with limited recycling capabilities.”

“Crumbling Wall,” made in 2000, is a floor-to-ceiling monolith, roughly 12 feet wide and 2 feet thick, made from rusty sheets of hand-perforated steel that are commonly used -- rather painfully, one would guess -- to grate cassava root for a West African staple called gari. “Peak Project,” from 1999, consists of several dozen free-standing cones, each about 3 feet high, made from the tops of milk tins shipped to Nigeria from Europe and the U.S.

Both works have a painfully ironic undertone: the fact that the monolith, for instance, which feels almost stained with the blood of those who rely on these vicious-looking instruments for their sustenance, is simultaneously so imposing and so ramshackle, and that the cones -- made from the detritus of relief efforts -- suggest nothing so much as piles of gold, hoarded in the cellar of some king.

Hanging on the walls around the circumference of the gallery are Anatsui’s most recent works: broad, draping “tapestries” made from the aluminum of discarded bottle caps, patterned to resemble kente cloth, a ceremonial textile traditionally woven by the Asante people of Ghana (where Anatsui was born) and the Ewe people of Ghana, Benin and Togo. (The title of the show, “Gawu,” is a composite Ewe word that refers to metal and a cloak.) Despite the tawdry nature of the material, these are lavish, beautiful objects, glistening gold with touches of red and black and draped with heavy, luxurious folds across each wall.

There’s a poignancy to the fact that these are not merely discarded items, but also the lowest rung of the recycling chain: things that must be discarded because they can’t, like the bottles that held liquor or the cans that held milk, be reused. For Anatsui to transform these particular materials into objects of such regal presence is not only a celebration of cultural resourcefulness but also a powerful act of defiance against the often contaminating forces of the West.

In the catalog interview, Anatsui explains his preference for found objects in terms that reflect the inextricable nature of material, artistic and political concerns.

“I believe that colour is inherent in everything,” he says, “and it’s possible to get colour from around you, and that you’re better off picking something which relates to your circumstances and your environment than going to buy a ready-made colour. It’s like someone, a stranger, is trying to tell you what to do, rather than you deciding what to do with what circumstances have made available to you.”

Active as an artist since the late 1960s, Anatsui is well known on his home continent -- the Independent of London dubbed him one of the 50 most important cultural figures in Africa -- and has been widely shown in Europe as well as New York.

This is his first solo show on the West Coast, however, and an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed.

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‘El Anatsui: Gawu’

Where: Fowler Museum at UCLA, Westwood

When: Noon to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays, extended to 8 p.m. Thursdays; closed Mondays and Tuesdays

Ends: Aug. 26

Price: Free

Contact: (310) 825-4361; www.fowler.ucla.edu