Art review: Jacci Den Hartog at Rosamund Felsen Gallery

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Landscape painting has been around for centuries. It’s a genre that’s packed with masterpieces from all over the globe.

Landscape sculpture is another matter altogether. Sculptors rarely make landscapes. But if you think that set decorators and diorama builders have a monopoly on 3-D renditions of the landscape, head over to Rosamund Felsen Gallery, where Jacci Den Hartog has installed eight new landscape sculptures that delight and inspire.

Beautifully sculpted from a lightweight, paper-based polymer, Den Hartog’s steel-reinforced works hang from the wall, like paintings. Six are 3-D depictions of swiftly flowing rivers, their serpentine forms snaking through space and cascading around rocks, boulders and banks you fill in with your imagination.

From a distance, “Glacial Speed,” “Double Vision” and “What Are You Doing Out Here?” resemble gigantic, 3-D brushstrokes, their waters’ tumultuous surfaces seemingly shaped by the bristles of industrial-strength paintbrushes.

Den Hartog undermines that impression by playing with perspective in “Coming Down.” The peaks of its mountains appear small and distant, as they would in an image. Photography’s capacity to stop time, or to create the illusion of frozen moments, also plays into her sculptures, whose stillness generates more serenity than their modest dimensions suggest.

The works that do not depict water, “Driving Through Utah” and “Trip to Big Sur,” feature bright orange buttes, purple cliffs and sandy beaches. They too seem to float -- to defy gravity by making a place for art’s magic.

-- David Pagel

Rosamund Felsen Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, (310) 828-8488, through Aug. 14. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.rosamundfelsen.com

Images: ‘Glacial Speed’ (top) and ‘Driving Through Utah.’ Courtesy of Rosamund Felsen Gallery.