ART REVIEWS : A Mysterious Place Between Paintings and Photographs

Even though John Baldessari almost never holds a paintbrush in his hand, his art has long been yoked to painting. A first-generation Conceptual artist, he has poked and prodded the conundrum of living in an age when painting hangs on as the most privileged medium of Western art since the Renaissance, despite the dominance of camera work in the modern world.

Baldessari’s retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art five years ago was a ringing affirmation that photographically based art could indeed assume the complex public stature of painting. It culminated in his widely acclaimed work of the 1980s, in which ordinary news and publicity photographs were cropped, conjoined, altered and enlarged into quirky, quasi-narrative displays. Often wryly humorous, they rank as Postmodern equivalents to elaborate Baroque paintings, chronicling our culture’s prosaic mythologies.

Baldessari’s new work, currently at Margo Leavin Gallery, takes that marvelous journey yet another intriguing step. Now, abstract painting is in the cross-hairs.

At the gallery entrance hangs “Three Striding Figures (With Sashes),” a two-part picture that is something of a transition between old and new. The top of the vertical diptych shows irregular orange circles above fluid rivulets of yellow, red and blue color, all arrayed on a large expanse of white; the composition subtly recalls paintings by Morris Louis, a favorite of the late critic Clement Greenberg, champion of pure abstraction as the pinnacle of modern art. On the bottom of the diptych, a black-and-white photograph of three military figures in full parade-dress is printed upside down.

The color shapes above mirror the topsy-turvy shapes of the soldiers’ faces and the sashes on their uniforms below. Baldessari cleverly establishes a wicked comparison between formalist abstraction, touted by Greenberg as art’s highest achievement, and faceless, militaristic decoration.

The new work is slightly different from Baldessari’s past explorations, which also cast a witty and critical eye on abstract painting, often through paint applied directly to the photographs. “Three Striding Figures (With Sashes)” begins to establish a certain independence for the painted portion of the picture.

That distinction is pushed forward in the show’s remaining 20 works, all made this year. Portions of photographs become templates for independently painted shapes. An arm, the space between a person’s body and a handrail, the contour formed around lights in a ceiling--these unusual shapes are repeated in paint, usually on a separate field of white.

In haunting works such as “Bandaged Person and Flowers (With Observer)” and “Door With Intruder (With Two Large Black Shapes),” the echo between painted abstract shapes and photographic information becomes mysterious and oddly destabilizing. The mind, which usually reads photographs quickly, slows down to a crawl.

The result is photographs that reveal themselves as infused with a sense of sheer abstractness. Baldessari’s work convincingly insists that painting has not been the only powerful engine of abstraction in the modern world. Photography has too.

* Margo Leavin Gallery, 812 N. Robertson Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 273-0603, through May 20. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Artful Sounds: The wonderful new show of sound sculptures by Martin Kersels at Dan Bernier Gallery is anchored by an eccentric, post-1950s tradition of transforming the ordinary commerce of a contemporary art gallery into a catalyst for art. Add a dose of John Cage-style music and the memory of Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel’s Surrealist classic “Un Chien Andalou,” and the result is a cacophonous concert of endearing nuttiness.

“Objects of the Dealer With Soundtracks” is a group of 15 small cassette-players, each with a pair of speakers, which are affixed to various items on and around the gallery owner’s desk (his work station has been temporarily moved into the gallery’s main room).

When the dealer answers the telephone, uses the Rolodex, receives a fax, opens a desk drawer, types on the computer’s keyboard or searches in his appointment book, the attached cassette-player switches on and taped music blares forth.

Needless to say, if the telephone rings while a fax is coming in as Bernier looks through the address book to add a name to a computer file, musical pandemonium ensues. (The new music compositions are by Mark Wheaton, who has collaborated with Kersels before.) The more the dealer does his business, the more art gets made.

A slightly cruder variation on this captivating theme is embodied in a second work. (A third piece, incorporating a video striptease, was not ready for viewing when the show opened). A baby grand piano, outfitted with a microphone, amplifier and speakers, haltingly drags itself back and forth across the gallery floor, courtesy of a motorized winch beneath its lid.

As the piano shimmies and scrapes along on its brief journey in the spotlight, amplified rumbles boom from its belly. When it reaches the opposite side of the room, the wired piano runs out of electric cord, dramatically unplugs itself and suddenly shuts down.

Kersels’ animated sculptures reflect on the situation of the artist in contemporary life. Their open-hearted ambivalence is at once funny and poignant, devilish and resigned. In his second solo show, this increasingly interesting artist continues to display an endearingly wicked, insightful and playful wit.

* Dan Bernier Gallery, 3026 1/2 Nebraska Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 264-4882, through June 10. Closed Sundays and Mondays.