The Future Imaginary

The appropriated theme of “The Future Imaginary,” the current exhibition at the Ben Maltz Gallery at OTIS College of Art and Design, is convoluted and brings together artists from a very broad spectrum.  The heady concept of adapting a show to and from a new DVD novel by multiple authors, using multiple curators, is a bit perplexing even before you see a single piece.  Having established that, however, the curious case of TFI is yet a coherent and elegant display of eleven artists’ takes on the tome of looking back to understand the future.  The word “misremembering” and “the old future” are featured widely and, upon first perusal of the space — replete with more text and decorative posters of surreal, historical, fictional sources, both real and imaginary — one feels plunked down into the pages of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, or perhaps into a post-modern edifice by Paul Williams. Belying the gallery’s size and the number of artists, there is a lot to see.

The curators’ employment of these posters and other props create a veil of stodgy and scientific history not only to punctuate the art but also to blend it and provide connective tissue to its inherent diversity.  Among the comprehensive breadth of the “Future” artists, some artworks cling a bit too close to the theme, while others bridge the bidirectional gap of past/future with a concrete connection to contemporary art.

Deborah Aschheim, perhaps the most well-known of the eleven, has installed a large biomorphic coil suspended from the ceiling.  She used light bulbs along the trumpeting snake of material, in progressing order of her memory of the types of bulbs remembered growing up from childhood.  Thus, as you follow the form, which is encased in a waxy-type substance, the piece glows under its own power of yellow bulbs, brighter incandescence, and along to super bright xenons and CFLs.  Small but very powerful fans resting atop the final curve blow intermittently, and below protrude pods containing small video screens showing vintage skiing scenes.  If the lightbulbs are the vertebrae of this thing, the fans and skiers are the restless heart and soul giving it life and reason.

Jon Kessler installed two mixed-media images of Japanese pop icons. The works are really just pictures but heavily constructed in ways that overpower the central figure. Layers of small-scale technology — gears, rods, weights, lights, frames — all work in concert to vibrate the banal source imagery (one a banner and the other a photo) and render it almost pointless in the jungle of metal and electricity.  If that was the point, it was lost on me and I sincerely apologize. Mr. Kessler is also a celebrated artist.

Lea Rekow’s kaleidoscopes are most enjoyable, hands-on works that situate the viewer right along the perspective of the show’s premise.  Her two works are traditional mirrored scopes married to video of abstract light and bees, respectively. They are highly crafted and most user-friendly. One of them sits in the middle of the floor with a viewer platform to stand on and a turning wheel to be manipulated as you stare down into the cylinder.  Rekow has lived most of her adult life in developing countries and is currently Executive Director of the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe.  And who doesn’t love a kaleidoscope?

The “Imaginary” artists were asked to absorb the DVD novel and then either respond in kind or loan an existing work that fit the bill.

Fly Away, Not Gone Too Far, an older work by artist Douglas Repetto, falls into the latter category. From 2005, this bizarre mixed-media, ready-made display of nature on a techno-time-warp captures, via LCD screen, the life of a houseplant in a rusty cage.  Commonly known as a Chinese prayer plant, the Maranta Leuconeura is actually a native of Brazil and folds up its leaves at night, hence the everyday name.  The video shows the plant’s activity at five-minute intervals squeezed into a constant stream. The ensuing digital dance on the small screen is a diminutive dream sequence of nature at work.  Repetto’s other work in the show is a multiple squirrel cage architecture, each cage containing notes made and inserted by viewers and spun into the cycle of “the problem of the broken human mind,” according to the wall text.

Perhaps least obviously joined to the theme but most expansive and thought-provoking are two new works at the front of the gallery.  Ed Osborn’s music boxes, triggered by motors and rubber tubing at the touch of a button, sing metallic tones and twisting neoprene in an inventive crawl up the face of the future’s challenges.  The oddball arrangement of this piece is exactly what firmly situates it within the context but then blows you away as great new-school artwork.

Jeff Cain’s The Southwest Passage, minimal in its physicality, enshrouds the viewer like the scaffolding on Williams’ Theme Building at neighboring LAX.  This happens by way of the effect of the four monitors’ stance and their content: the view of four different local bodies of water, all shown where the camera’s eye level matches that of the water.  Add the factor of the motion on the water level: the “bow-cam,” or whatever Cain used to capture this sea-level scenery, skims along as would, say, a Roomba vacuum on your living room floor.  Spinning around in the middle to take it all in, the viewer almost disorientates, awash in the cycle of intimated flood and dizziness.  Visually, each image holds its own as well, perhaps “misremembering” John Humble’s iconic photographs of the LA River.

To watch a walk through with artists, click here.

“The Future Imaginary” runs through March 28th. Visit the OTIS website for more info.