Review: What’s behind those peepholes at Union Station?

Who can resist a peephole, visual entry to some sort of private delight? Especially one — make that a dozen — making their mysterious appeal in a highly public setting?

The large wooden shipping crate parked at a jaunty angle to the foot traffic flowing through Union Station's grand waiting room is perforated with peepholes, most rimmed in brass. Black painted arrows act as effectively as carnival barkers to funnel the crowd's diffuse and drifty attention to each portal.

The sheer unlikeliness of this art project, “Cabinet of Curiosities,” is gratifying in itself. And that’s a good thing, because not much more gratification happens once the intimate deal is sealed and your eye meets brass.

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Arrows entice passersby to the peepholes of “Cabinet of Curiosities.” (Leah Ollman)

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Curator Carl Berg brought seven L.A. artists, each constructing a scene inside the peephole that flutters on the threshold between concealment and revelation. Many play with scale, using fish-eye lenses to suggest a view far deeper and broader than the actual space allows. Most of the views, however, are simplistic and bland. Added together, they don't induce the noirish thrill of a single one of the door peepholes in Michael McMillen’s “Red Trailer Motel,” his memorable 2003 installation at L.A. Louver.

For “Cabinet of Curiosities,” Noel Korten gives us access to a cosmic aquarium with a rippling ceiling of sand. David DiMichele replicates a white-box gallery with an installation of illuminated, crisscrossing plexi rods.

Keith Lord creates a kaleidoscopic, mirrored interior, somewhere between fun-house and bad dream. Ashley Hagen’s four-peephole "Recollection" leaves the most to the imagination by offering it a provocative place to ramble, a fragmented urban landscape of staircases, brick walls and empty interiors. The other participants  are Tanya Brodsky, Andre Yi, and Cecilia Miniucchi.

“Cabinet of Curiosities” has huge potential as a concept. Let’s hope for future iterations that can sustain the same spark of curiosity up close that they ignite from afar.

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Union Station, 800 N. Alameda St., Los Angeles. On view daily through Aug. 31. www.unionstationla.com.

“Nearly” by Noel Korten. (“Cabinet of Curiosities”)

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