PHOTOS OF GREEK ISLAND RUINS AT UC RIVERSIDE

When an artist deals with the literal world the idea is to allow meaning to seep through facts. In a set of paintings and related sculpture called the “Akroteri Series,” California artist Faiya Fredman wrestles with the facts of an archeological site she found on the Greek island of Santorini in 1982. Fascinated with the resonances of the place, she photographed its ruins extensively and eventually came up with the work now on view at UC Riverside through Friday.8

It consists of seven large compositions concocted from blown-up site photos altered with paint and relief elements, such as attached boards and rocks. Rather than etherealizing the imagery, the added elements reinforce the sense of a real place whose mantle of commonplace reality is thicker than its layers of ash and dust.

Maybe the best effect here is created by a few fragments of spare minimalist sculpture placed around the gallery. They suggest our links to Greek rationality, idealism and the idea that the exhibition hall is another kind of cultural crypt that one day will become an archeological curiosity.

The work is done with a kind of tremulous care that conveys the artist’s enchantment with the place, but it is a sensation that the viewer doesn’t feel. Looking at this exhibition is like trying to touch somebody through a pane of glass. The ideas are clear but the feelings remain vague and distanced. It’s like a visiting a natural history museum.