Angles of Repose

Consider angles of repose, as if to conjure the body intimating poolside poses or reclining on the sand along some tropical shore.  The new show by the same name, “Angles of Repose,” by Connie Zehr at Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica, California, evokes such languid and leisurely activity. The two-room installation of Zehr’s photos and trademark sand pieces exist fittingly in the two-person exhibition, the other half of the space consumed by Bruria Finkel’s complementary paintings and installation, “The Complete Aleph Series.”

Zehr’s titles, like her, are always thoughtful, concise, and belying the profoundness of the art and aura they encompass.  The photographs — inkjets mounted onto aluminum — are of earlier sand installations and are befitting the current format of most of Zehr’s recent shows.  She has displayed these elegant large-scale photographs alongside her floor works for well over ten years now.  Floor works by nature are highly anticipatory. The viewer always expects something new, different, bigger, and perhaps better when they know they will encounter something amassing the entire floor of a large gallery.  You know you won’t just be looking at the walls, and that’s exciting.  Somehow, the floor is a notion not lost on gallery and museum crowds that still hold its novelty.  Zehr’s “Angles of Repose” does not disappoint.

Knowing more or less what to expect — I was a student of Zehr’s at Claremont Graduate University when it was still intimately called a graduate “school” — I was still taken aback by the expanse of this new work.  Simple, spare and relatively low compared to some earlier works, “Repose” is a system of circles poured onto the floor and further flattened by the spinning of a long metal rod over them.  Half regular west coast garden variety sand, half exotic pacific southwest bright orange silica, the piece could be a giant melting 50-50 ice cream bar with a metal Popsicle stick floating on its thawed stickiness. Still, the color and the shape and the metallic schism refresh the memory of older works in a calming and reassuring way.  Synthesis, always a staple of an established artist’s evolution, cries out with vibrant color, yet in most subdued fashion, even with an important element of surprise hanging about in the corner.

In the distance stands a small, sculpted figure perched on another long rod, balanced on two small cones — another trait of Zehr’s work.  Lit with a single can also from the floor, the semi-crouched body not only diverts attention from the sand; resting balanced and focused, it also stands relevant to the work because he is also at a similar “angle,” reflecting an attitude of indifference and calm.

Customary of Zehr’s approach in activating a space, the sand pools spread wide and low, and stretch almost wall to wall.  The viewer must dance along the contour of the work to take it all in, and navigate carefully near the figure, thus becoming a part of the work.  Zehr encourages her students to carefully consider how the viewer would interact with a proposed installation and to proceed accordingly, allowing the viewer to enliven the space as opposed to merely seeing it.

The connection of the anomaly of the rod element now complete, the installation’s mystery still beckons coolly.  Gravity, the hidden but most purposeful part of the show, holds it’s own questions, and not all of them are answered.  What’s under all that sand? How does it animate that which is above?  The gigantic effort to hold down that rod and twist it just so to give the sand the circles, wrinkles, and other effects singled out by Zehr remains elusive, and you just want to imagine your own magic world beneath the surface — some place with the allure of a paradise lost, or the marvelous pages of some comic fantasy.

“Angles of Repose” is another culmination of ideas and processes sifted through the years of a seasoned career.  In its basic economy, we can, with some looking-glass insight, witness the depth and experience that characterizes the hand of a truly professional and sharing artist.  We can also see an activator of our own imagination.  A piece of strong work with a soft touch, calculated color and the delightful forward thinking of experimentation, “Repose” rests silently yet surreptitiously evoking responses and situations running parallel with dreams.

For more information and gallery hours, visit the Track 16 website.
Show runs until May 30th.