Art that clicks

Gallery 25 pieces together a great 'Assemblage' show.

Published online on Sunday, Jun. 22, 2008

Chemistry is an ephemeral and mysterious thing. Movie-star couples can have it in romantic spades on screen -- or wind up hobbling along like brother and sister. A chef might combine two wildly different menu items and score a hit -- or cause indigestion. A boss and employee might get along famously, or they could wind up at each other's throats.

Art shows rely on chemistry, too. Curators long for it. Museum marketers crave it. Gallery hoppers flock to it. You're never quite sure what will happen when you take works from more than one artist and put them in the same room until you do it. Chemistry between elements can be about so many hard-to-measure concepts: compatability, tension or a combination of the two. Sometimes everything just clicks.

That's the case with "Assemblage," the terrific new exhibition at Gallery 25 that continues through June 30. Curator Karen LeCocq, a Mariposa artist well-known for her own assemblage art, brought together eight artists, including herself -- some familiar to local art lovers, others new names -- known for an interest in assemblage, or putting together found objects.

The different works combine in intriguing ways, from Chris Beards' large-scale works that suggest the fanciful giddiness of a toy store to David Medley's coolly evocative conglomerations of neon, scrap metal and corrugated roofing that bring to mind a post-apocalyptic drinking establishment.

Part of the chemistry of the show is the color scheme: lots of rust and earth tones, as befitting the many found objects (read: junk) combined in the works -- and here and there a bright and cheery splash, such as the vivid hues in Jerrie Peters' small-scale landscape designs.

There is a sense here of used things, of dignified decay, of the excitement you get when opening an old trunk from the attic and discovering treasures within.

Part of it is the ebb and flow of the traffic pattern in the gallery: The way that the bright buttons on one of Nancy Youdelman's trademark encaustic-slathered dresses pick up the colors in Peters' little worlds directly across; the way the sharp angles of Medley's neon works complement the solid presence of Raphael X. Reichert's big and bold creations; the way the circular pattern of the displays moves the spectator through the room with a kind of spiral energy.

And part is just the tremendous creativity and whimsy of the show.

Take Beards' "Calendar," for example. The Willits artist, whom LeCocq "discovered" at a Merced College exhibition, has crafted a semi-circle of drooping, skinny nylon-mesh sacks weighed down by decorative balls.

Interspersed at various intervals within the sacks are oak galls, which are odd, roundish organic formations that result when wasps interact with oak trees. The fixture from which the sacks hang resembles a court jester's hat, and there is a light-hearted and whimsical feel to the piece.

Then there's Youdelman's remarkable collection of vintage letters from the 1930s that she bought on eBay.

All are addressed to the same man: one Allen H. Watkins of Greensboro, N.C. All are written by different women smitten with him.

Youdelman doesn't know much about Watkins, but it's clear from the tone of the women's letters that he was a charismatic man with a country-club lifestyle.

One thing that is remarkable about the piece is simply how beautiful the letters are with their carefully inked handwriting and formally addressed envelopes. (Can you imagine hanging a bunch of e-mails from today on the wall? Not quite the same aesthetic impact.)

"No doubt you take me for an idiot or just bad," one saddened woman laments.

But this isn't an attempt to re-create a relationship.

The work does nothing more than give a one-sided glimpse of a desirable man. We know his name, and all the rest that remains are the objects -- these precious letters that were likely dumped out by disinterested heirs -- that he left behind.

All the rest of the holes are left for the imagination to fill.

Which is perhaps why the show is so compelling. It makes you look at "junk" -- stuff that we wouldn't look at twice under different circumstances -- in a whole new way. It finds the intensity in the ordinary.

When "Assemblage"' opened at ArtHop earlier this month, the gallery was crammed with viewers. The excitement in the air was palpable. For one of the few times I can remember in this cavernous gallery, which Gallery 25 moved into in 2005, it felt like the space was being used to its full advantage.

The result is a full-blooded, exciting, memorable experience -- and one that reflects admirably on its curator.

"I think it should be a traveling show," LeCocq says. "It could go to the Guggenheim or the Modern."

I agree.