.Eclectic Affinities

Three artists explore art, science, and philosophy.

Art has become increasingly abstract and intellectual in the past
century, culminating in conceptual art’s wall text, diagrams, and
photos in the ’70s. Although most artists today eschew such visual
puritanism, they have clung to the freedom to choose from all fields of
human activity, including the obscure or esoteric, for inspiration and
methodology. Swarm Gallery is showing such eclectic art. Erik
Friedman
and Reuben Margolin in Final Dream Fringe
present machines and other artifacts as human symbols or surrogates;
Gareth Spor in his Star Gate prints reconfigures the
“ultimate trip” sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 to posit
questions about space and time.

Friedman’s drawings on Duralene drafting film juxtapose dissociated
urban imagery. Mechanical objects or artifacts — a Ferris wheel,
an ornate chandelier, a carved Baroque angel, pieces of molding or
statuary that look like Roy Lichtenstein paint-by-number brushstrokes
— are precisely rendered in black ink over white gouache; they
float over grayed-out, less defined siblings, or over telephone wires
and poles rendered in blue silhouette on a second, recessed sheet of
film. The effect is of objects seen through and reflected on
windshields or windows, or of cinematic montage: charged objects loom
in the protagonist’s or viewer’s mind’s eye while the urban landscape
whirls by (or the older visions fade).

Margolin exhibits a pair of eccentric, intricately crafted machines
utilizing basic technology — string, off-center cams, and motors
— to attain humorous and lyrical ends. “Pentagonal” initially has
an ecclesiastical or ritualistic look. A conical top structure houses a
motor that rotates an arm connected via cams to dozens of strings;
these suspend silver cylinders suggestive of candles. It appears to be
a gigantic wind chime, or candelabra, but when the cylinders gently
pump up and down, they transform into pistons — Duchampian sex
machine combined with electric prayer wheel. “Yellow Wiggle” is a
larger piece outfitted with two rotary motors that elaborately power a
series of rods like piano hammers that, ingeniously and hilariously, do
the Wave.

Spor’s 2001-based digital prints are described as inverting
or rotating space (usually considered horizontal) and time (usually
vertical) to generate “an unnatural or alien perspective” that
questions the limitations of the human perceptual apparatus. While such
thorny scientific-philosophical concepts may make even evolved 2008
Star Children feel like the everted pig-dog of Galaxy Quest, or
the dying, singing HAL, the vertical images, which reverse normal
widescreen aspect ratios, are quite beautiful core samples from 1969;
you may recognize the views. Final Dream Fringe and
Stargate run through December 21 at Swarm Gallery (580
Second St., Oakland). SwarmGallery.com.

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