Even now, when the strangest of bedfellows aren't so strange anymore, the materials brought together in "Doublemix" at De Soto Gallery in Venice induce a shudder of surprise.
Photographer Denis Darzacq and ceramic artist Anna Lüneman have collaborated on a series in which sculptural fragments in clay are embedded into the surface of photographic prints.
Conceptually, the combination sets off sparks, a fruitful friction between the primal medium and the digital, between tactile and immaterial, enduring and fleeting. Visually, though, the results are mixed. The best works don't baffle but beguile; they stage a dialogue between the two-dimensional images by the Parisian photographer and the three-dimensional forms by the French sculptor based in Belgium. In one wonderfully odd piece, the right side of a statue of a standing figure morphs into an unwieldy clay prosthesis, a doodle that oozes down beside and beneath the statue's base, to end in a glossy gray knob.
In a few pieces, small pinch pots are recessed, like divots, into the printed surface. A dog appears to be chasing one above its head. Another is set into the side of a house, the interruption in visual logic suggesting a more dire interruption in domestic stability.
The real lingering question here is not whether photography and ceramics make a viable pair, but whether unremarkable efforts in any media, when joined, can add up to more than the sum of their parts.
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De Soto Gallery, 1350 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice. Through July 23. Closed Mondays throughs Wednesday. (323) 253-2255, www.desotogallery.com
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