Art Review: Barbara Kasten at Gallery Luissoti

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For all the attention surrounding the 60-plus museum exhibitions encompassed by the Pacific Standard Time initiative, many of the real treasures have been found among the countless galleries that have also taken up the mantle, providing opportunities, in many cases, for a more focused and intimate engagement with the artists of the PST generation, wherever they fall on the Getty’s radar.

“Barbara Kasten: Experimental Photography From the 1970s” at Gallery Luisotti is one such opportunity. Kasten, who lived in Los Angeles through the ’70s but later moved to Chicago, came to photography by way of painting and sculpture. Influenced by constructivism, minimalism and the then emergent Light and Space movement, she utilized the camera less as a tool for documentation than as an active element in the creation of her compositions, photographing the play of light through installations she constructed in her studio from sheets of glass, mirrors, metal and other materials.

Abstract and geometric but with a delicate sense of atmospherics, the work moves between qualities of photography, sculpture and painting, exploring the formal nuance of line, shape, light and tone. Contemporary work displayed alongside that of the 1970s reveals Kasten’s concern with these elements to be a lifelong project, offering a welcome view into a focused yet deeply inquisitive practice.

Gallery Luisotti, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave, Santa Monica, (310) 453-0043, through July 17. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.galleryluisotti.com

--Holly Myers

Gallery Luisotti, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave, Santa Monica, (310) 453-0043, through July 17. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.galleryluisotti.com

Above: Barbara Kasten, Amalgam Series, Untitled 79-13. Credit: Gallery Luisotti