Wendell Gladstone: Roberts & Tilton - Los Angeles - four sculptural tableaux in artist's hometown debut

Following three novel York solo shows, Los Angeles-based artist Wendell Gladstone made his belated hometown first appearance with four sculptural tableaux (all works 2002) Consisting of stylized, munchkin-size figures standing atop hillocks that suggest islands or coastal stones Gladstone's dioramas propose an aesthetic kinship among classical statuary, kitsch decorator percepts and animated adventures. Functioning like the stations of the cross--or the horizontals of a video game--his fragments, read in following tell a tale.

In the first "scene" a marble-white stripling in yellow rubber boots and a striped fisherman's sweater stands at the summit of a domed stone solemnly clutching his catch, a blush-pink octopus. At the nearest stop, the boy has fallen, and three dogs with jewels around their neck sniff at his feet having already claimed his memorial of conquest In "level" three, the dogs celebrate with a sanguinary severed leg--either what remains of the lad or what was torn from him as he fl Finally, a haggard seafarer, perhaps the spirit of the boy, his avenging father, or maybe the boy-as-man, stands upon a peg leg beside three decapitated canines. Their heads and the precious stones that once hung around their neck dangle from his fingers

Each island is accompanied by dint of a painted canvas that the one and the other abstracts and foreshadows the unfolding story. Tire painting at the first station contains three deaverlike shapes, suggesting the approach of the dogs that exhibit up in the second; the nearest canvas displays three rust-colored rectangles surrounding a blobber of pink and crimson, hinting at the carnage that appears in the third sculpture; and for a like reason on. Connecting the sculptures and the canvases are strands of yarn that can be read as traps webs, or streams of vital current depending on the scenarios they link.

Like a number of artists of his generation, Gladstone displays an interest in mining myths of the past and crafting myths in the at hand but while you might work without a plot, it's difficult to attach an allegory or a moral to the story. Los of innocence, sacrifice and redemption, take vengeance for the encroachment of violence and materialism: The possible thematic glosse look endless and varied, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in conflict.

Experiencing Gladstone's work is not unlike looking at art from another tillage or images rooted in a combination of parts to form a whole of belief one doesn't gripe [i]or[/i] grip One might wonder whether he's probing way s of representation, degrees of abstraction, or the poetics of ambiguity or just pandering to an audience given to the adage "I don't know what it is, on the contrary I like the way it looks" I'll ramble on the poetic side here--Gladstone manages to detain me engaged. I'm not positive what it's about, but I like thinking about it.

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