Art review: 'The Big Four' at Steve Turner Contemporary

The premise of “The Big Four” — sculpture by four Los Angeles artists who work on long-term, large-scale projects — is patently dull. Thankfully, most of the work on view at Steve Turner Contemporary is not. Indeed, it’s nice to have the space — both mental and physical — to focus on just four spare pieces. 

For some artists, working on a project for an extended period of time means that it becomes encrusted, not only with layers of meaning but with layers of stuff. In the case of these four — Jed Lind, Jacob Yanes, Michael Decker and Liz Glynn — time seems to have had a refining effect, resulting for the most part in works of soft-spoken clarity. 

Lind’s 10-foot satellite dish is riddled with irregular holes patterned after fan coral; they also evoke the veiny texture of decaying leaves. The piece is an uncanny marriage of nature and technology that suggests the organic spread of high-tech communication even as it embodies its decay. Death is also a double-edged sword in Yanes’ larger-than-life statue of a modern-day soldier. The oddly vulnerable, reclining figure undermines the typically upright, heroic pose of military memorials with a subtly submissive erotic charge. 

Decker’s tree of vintage ironing boards — balancing precariously like a low-rent Nancy Rubins — unfortunately falls flat, but the most powerful work belongs to Glynn, who has turned the gallery’s second floor into a claustrophobic wooden enclosure that appears to open onto a vertiginous, bottomless nothing. It’s disorienting and feels truly precarious for a moment — groping in a dark little corner, you’re unsure whether to turn back or jump.

–- Sharon Mizota

Steve Turner Contemporary, 6026 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., (323) 931-3721, through Dec. 18. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.steveturnercontemporary.com

Images: Jacob Yanes, "Soldier" (top) and Jed Lind, "Captain Midnight." Credit: Wild Don Lewis

Comments

[Magenta Artist Kitty]

After seeing Michael Decker's ironing boards, I find some remarks superficial. How does it fall flat? Is it flat because on the outer surface, it appears as Nancy Rubins influenced? The strategy employed by Decker is different from those of Rubins who uses cable, employs engineers, and has structures fabricated to support her monumental sculptures. Decker's ironing boards are not cabled, epoxied, or welded. They are held together through the interlocking of ironing board legs. Not just a different scientific strategy, but one that requires the artist to combine and recombine objects to create an aesthetically and structurally sound work.