ART / AROUND THE GALLERIES

“As a result of a terrible experimental grey magik experiment gone wrong, Mystr S. Mole, once a famed omni-media mekka bottle-bot, un-requited rock star and amateur thought-experiment physicist was stricken with an insidious incurable fatal disease that will leave him little more than a throbbing paralyzed husk -- kept alive by machines -- a brain in a jar . . . “

So begins the tale of NewJack Rasputin, alter ego to multimedia artist Tucker Stilley, as told in the comic book that accompanies Stilley’s extraordinary exhibition at Monte Vista Projects. An energetic melange of digitally compiled imagery -- photographs, drawings, found images, maps, charts and other graphics -- and enigmatic fragments of narration, the book chronicles the ailing Mole’s seclusion and subsequent transformation, “after months of lonely labor, fierce and forlorn,” into the triumphant figure of NewJack, “a super hero cripple pixel jockey whose tentacles reach deep into the interweb.”

Though laced with keen, ironic humor, it is a tale of existential proportions, detailing a struggle not only with the body but also with the fundamental conditions of reality: time, space, matter, consciousness, identity. “You’ll have to go deep inside to survive,” one of the book’s many voices intones, and the gravity of the ordeal is palpable, however playful the language.

The disease in question -- or at least its real-world corollary -- is ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), which has rendered Stilley almost completely paralyzed. The exhibition and the comic book are but two facets of a larger project, “The Permanent Record of NewJack Rasputin,” collected under the aegis of a website (web.mac.com/the.permanent.record), which Stilley maintains through the use of specially designed tools and software. (He controls a cursor using a mouse-like device that adheres to his forehead and responds to the motions of his head.)

The goal is nothing short of the creation, via technology, of a second, better-functioning, less vulnerable body. As Stilley himself explains on the site, with characteristic wit: “I needed to make some kind of rack to hang my dear old life on. Convinced me to spread my dear old life across the wwweb, hither and thither and yonder.”

Curated by Sam Durant, a friend of Stilley, the exhibition is part installation, part interactive performance. The walls are covered with digital prints of various sizes, rendered in a loose, lively, collage-like style similar to that of the comic book, as well as passages of printed text -- fragments of his own conversation, primarily, as spoken through a computer. The interactive element comes by way of a monitor with a live feed to Stilley’s residence in Pasadena, where he has remained during gallery hours through the duration of the show, watching the activity in the gallery via surveillance camera, making work, demonstrating his methods and chatting with anyone who wishes to communicate. The gallery calls it a virtual residency.

The exhibition, however, is just the tip of the iceberg -- a material expression of the imaginative universe encompassed by the vast and labyrinthine website. There you’ll find the comic book in its entirety, available for download as a PDF, and an additional selection of digital drawings, but also a great deal of music and sound work, a blog, a strange and haunting podcast tracking the journey of NewJack and his companions, and a marvelous collection of videos made over the last 15 years or so, predating and spanning Stilley’s illness.

The videos run a broad gamut, from impressionistic visual poetry to sci-fi narrative to political satire to music video to straight documentary to the distinctly uncategorizable, and all are well worth a perusal.

It is, all in all, a profoundly ambitious enterprise: a restless inquiry into the nature of existence, informed by limitations more extreme than most have to deal with but addressing questions we all face ultimately, and that art should be addressing more often than it does. What is this place? Why are we here? What is this body? How are we to weather the body’s deterioration? What do we leave behind?

Stilley raises the questions with urgency and humor, and with a deeply engaging poetic sensibility.

Monte Vista Projects, 5442 Monte Vista St., L.A., through May 3. Closed Mondays through Fridays. www.montevistaprojects.com.

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Fashioning a bold aesthetic

Sandroni Rey’s project space, housed in a shipping container in the parking lot behind the gallery, has rarely been employed to such appealing effect as in Kendell Carter’s installation, “Changing Room.”

Carpeted, lined in clean, white wainscoting, hung with nine candy-colored paintings on vellum and crowded with a variety of fabric-covered sculptures, the space offers a cozy, colorful shelter from the banality of the urban landscape, something like the interior of a stylish boutique.

The palette is drawn from hip-hop fashion -- bold, appetizing colors -- as are many of the actual materials. Several of the wall-mounted works, including a pair of so-called Drip Paintings, are draped with fat, multicolored shoelaces. The piece that takes up most of the center of the space, “Waves of Thought,” is a chandelier whose every rounded lamp is draped with a nylon do-rag.

The show’s title is intended to be taken literally. At the rear of the gallery is a screen built from stacked, upholstered milk crates that are mirrored on the far side, behind which piles of clothes hang from hooks on the wall, available to anyone compelled to try them on.

It is a clever commentary on the widespread cultural and commercial co-opting of street fashion, particularly given that the mirrors are all slightly askew, fracturing the reflection of the body into pieces and making it impossible to achieve a coherent view.

Carter, of course, is also co-opting -- luxuriating in the material extravagance of hip-hop and underscoring its ties to the baroque. He is not the first to draw the connection -- Kehinde Wiley, who happens to have a show up at Roberts & Tilton, makes the point rather more dramatically -- but the immersive quality of Carter’s installation adds a different, more enigmatic spin.

Sandroni Rey, 2762 S. La Cienega Blvd., L.A., (310) 280-0111, through May 23. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.sandronirey.com.

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Rough materials in careful repose

There is something oddly touching about the scrappy assortment of objects that make up German artist Manfred Pernice’s third solo show with Regen Projects. Rough-hewn pedestals with traces of tile and faux brick finish; small, vaguely architectural ceramic slab sculptures; a chunk of cement with a pole stuck into it; a cheap metal candleholder; precarious plywood towers resembling stacks of cardboard boxes -- the works have an ad hoc, low-budget quality much at odds with the refinement of the gallery’s white cube setting.

Their charm lies in the fact that they don’t feel lazy or especially sloppy, but rather carefully arranged and cared for, as though produced by someone who’s doing his best with minimal resources and limited prospects. They have an air of subtle dignity, like shelters constructed from scraps beneath a bridge or the makeshift toys of an impoverished child.

One senses a conceptual rationale at play -- some turn on the general German obsession with architecture and urban decay -- but the specifics are fairly obscure. What resonates are the material details: a moving blanket spread out neatly beneath a top-heavy column of boxes; the battered discount-store quality of the candleholder. Though banal, these details have a mysterious poignancy, calling attention, it seems, to the futility and the necessity of object making.

Regen Projects, 633 N. Almont Drive, L.A., (310) 276-5424, through May 16. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.regenprojects.com.

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A portrait of identity issues

“Los Inbetweens: Artists Sin Barrios” at Avenue 50 Studio tackles a broad and familiar theme -- too broad, perhaps, to be adequately addressed at this scale, but familiar enough, or at least relevant enough, to merit the attempt at multiple levels. It is an earnest if not revelatory group show with more than its share of strong works, exploring various forms of cultural dualism -- Mexican and American, male and female, gay and straight -- through the avenue of self-portraiture.

One highlight is Albert Reyes’ “Passports,” a clustered ensemble of prints and drawings made on the inside of old hardback book covers. Self-portraits mingle with images of other individuals, dogs, cats, celebrities and popular icons -- in a wide variety of styles -- to suggest a cross-section of the formation of identity.

The other standout is Stephanie Mercado’s untitled portrait of a woman in a tall baroque wig, striped tights, red shoes and a sleeve of tattoos down her arm, sitting on a chair that’s planted on a map of the world.

Other memorable works include a small self-portrait -- ballpoint pen on a cloth handkerchief -- by Shizu Saldamando; a pair of self-portraits by Angel Villanueva in the guise of conquistador Hernan Cortez and his mistress La Malinche, who produced one of Mexico’s first mestizos; a print by Rigo Maldonado, “Hard to Swallow,” depicting a man with a bird stuffed in his mouth; and a lovely graphite portrait by Marvin Jordana.

Avenue 50 Studio, 131 N. Ave. 50, L.A., (323) 258-1435, through May 3. Closed Mondays and Fridays. www.avenue50studio.com.