Review: Chris Finley at ACME Gallery
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Chris Finley’s 12th solo show in Los Angeles since 1993 is his smallest ever — only three pieces. But they’re doozies.
At ACME Gallery, each packs worlds within worlds, forming a quirky universe in which perception and memory play off each other in complex experiences that feed the imagination as they are fueled by its enlivening energy.
The simplest is a nearly 5-by-8-foot painting of swooping lines and spiraling curves that recalls Duchamp’s stylized riffs on Picasso. Finley’s sensual abstraction also refers to Russell Byars, the world-record-holding stone skipper, and Gerd Kanter, the Olympic gold medal winner in the discus. It all makes visual, not rational, sense.
“Teased as Children” and “The Shadow Man” require viewer participation. Both are Rube Goldberg-style devices that involve pulleys, Russian Constructivism, New Age spirit-catchers and a sense of adventure.
The first features a wall-mounted, horizontally oriented, Brancusi-style totem pole, a magnifying glass, a hefty, hand-carved fishing lure and a radically excerpted version of Greater L.A.’s phone book. The second includes a large metal lid that covers a suite of nutty pencil drawings, whittled golf tees, a hole-punched novel, a rubber ball, a heavy chain, a picnic blanket and several delicate sculptures made of balsa, string and paint, not to mention a generous dose of hokey ingenuity.
Finley’s terrifically idiosyncratic art is so far out of step with what is hip and trendy that it makes you think he might be out of his mind. But it’s also so inventive, unpretentious and engaging that you’d be nuts not to take it seriously. A 15-year survey of the 37-year-old’s art would open some eyes and blow some minds.
-- David Pagel
ACME Gallery, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., (323) 857-5942, through May 23. Closed Sundays and Mondays.
Above: ‘Teased as Children.’ Credit: Robert Wedemeyer/ACME Gallery