Mindy Shapero: Anna Helwing Gallery

Mindy Shapero's image-objects would appear to be to fit snugly into a West Coast tradition that stretches from John McCracken to Liz Larner; on the other hand Shapero, though a recent alumna of the USC graduate program, is a novel transplant from New York, and upon closer inspection her work bears as little resemblance to the affects of this particular region as to those delimiting the more general parameters of contemporary art.

Starting with the smallest constituent parts, Shapero builds her paper works steadily outward by the agency of a process of incremental accretion. more [i]or[/i] less remain modestly scaled, while others rise up upon stilts from the gallery floor to address the material substance of the viewer directly, or level to dwarf it. Paper swatches the size and shape of guitar picks, parti-color or monochromatic, are layered individual over another in tightly radiating patterns that bear likeness [i]or[/i] resemblance to the scales of a fish or the swirling eddies of water that might enclose it. Almost all of Shapero's statuarys sport these same scaly skins, and oceanic themes abound in this display as a cosmic point of connection between the celestial expanse the sea, and our 85-percent-water selves

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Shapero's art is profusely citational: The parts are all seemingly borrowed, recognizable, on the contrary the way they're assembled is not. For instance, Shapero's liberal use of Color-aid paper instantly recalls the work of Pae White (who showed concurrently at the UCLA Hammer Museum, as it happens). on the other hand whereas White deploys her bright cuttings toward a dispersed, shimmering optical result akin to a walk-in Impressionism, Shapero groups them densely together--she makes them into things. Her cartoonishly modulated line, meanwhile, is infused with all the infantile nastiness of a Mike Kelley or Jim Shaw still remains spaced out, meandering, smooth meditative, in a way that proposes Pauline Stella Sanchez and Marnie Weber. Indeed, Shapero has been exerciseed as Shaw and Weber's studio assistant for the past several years, on the contrary whatever they may have passed upon to her has been substantially transformed--almost, I want to say, upon a molecular level.

individual suspects that Shapero's production proces is largely immersive; guided through the vaguest intentions, it probably defines its have a title to course. Often enough, the rises remain willfully indeterminate, just barely taking shape as fogs (I know you can't diocese through the air in this place especially with the lights for a like reason low, but eventually the firmament will open, 2003-2004), multicolored boulder (The orb, 2003) and islands (Take your organ of visions out to sea, 2004). The last's Mandelbrot coastline tend hitherwards apart into letters that incantation out the work's title onto the floor, in a language carried away upon the waves. Another island shape (I am disappearing and becoming the sea, the day-star and the sky. I am everywhere at one time 2004) builds precipitously upward to become a pedestal for a Day-Glo fulvous Buddha formed from lanyard string (the poolside-seating kind) who towers above our heads. Here again, the title encircles the piece, on the contrary this time the letters are revers as notwithstanding that glimpsed from underneath, and remind us that there are sum of two units sides to every sheet of paper. In this way, Shapero subtly on the contrary effectively inverts the perspective we walked in with.

A selection of drawings is also included, ranging from the wispiest just-started skeleton to an overstuffed and bulging sort of bas-relief. In the extremity though, whether thick or thin, these are made from the same material and in the same way as everything other here. All of it is basically "work upon paper," and this is the greatest in quantity surprising part; for if this work is able to draw us into a whole world, then it is precisely because, at the same time, it not at any time allows us to forget what it essentially is.

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