Art Review

Anatomy Lesson: At Rosamund Felsen Gallery, the decidedly cool temperatures of Grant Mudford’s black-and-white photographs documenting the construction of a hospital emergency wing could not be further away from the fevered pitch we usually associate with lifesaving medical procedures.

Mudford documents inchoate sites that are in flux or that haven’t yet taken on a recognizable identity. Commissioned as a site documentation in honor of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s new Ruth and Harry Roman Emergency Department, his photographs are framed horizontally and shot in a matter-of-fact style reminiscent of Lewis Baltz. Like Baltz, Mudford puts his faith in his camera, not in the places he photographs.

Mudford’s gaze is clinical and unromantic. Like an X-ray or an autopsy photograph, his images penetrate through surface layers to reveal the physical anatomy of these unfinished rooms: the water pipes and air-conditioning shafts that function like lungs and blood vessels, the exposed wiring that juts like broken bone fragments through half-plastered walls.

In the same way that all bodies look basically the same on the inside, Mudford shows us that the interior skeleton of a building reveals nothing of its eventual purpose. Like Baltz’s series of eerily blank and depopulated industrial parks, Mudford’s hospital interiors are spare, anonymous and dispirited. One cannot imagine medical miracles or acts of faith occurring within these cold, industrial spaces, a fact that Mudford’s chilly, dispassionate gaze seems to implicitly acknowledge.

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* Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 828-8488, through Feb. 14. Closed Sundays and Mondays.