LA TIMES

BZ06_3

Knight, Christopher. “Artists who stand out from the group,” LA Times, Friday August 11, 2006

Finally, at the nearby Bank Gallery, “Sprawl” brings together five artists who work at the intersection of landscape and urbanism. Virtual space is a leitmotif.

It takes low-tech form in Keith Lord’s small mirrored boxes filled with artificial landscape dioramas. Computer graphics lurk behind David Hamill’s static architectural drawings, which compare unfavorably to the explosive paintings of Julie Mehretu. And electronic manipulation inflects Sebastian Lemm’s extruded landscape photographs, where feathery leaves are woven into cat’s cradles and Rorschach blots.

The standouts are Ann Diener and Bari Ziperstein. Both give sprawl an ambivalent kick.

Diener’s large gouache and colored pencil drawings merge swirling abstraction with stuttering figuration, implying a nonlinear narrative of furious growth, epic tumult and inescapable decay. They send your eye on a riotous journey. “Vertical Field #1” is like riding inside a tornado, where leaves, hats, trees and farmland fly by and wonder and devastation struggle for supremacy.

Ziperstein presents marvelously odd collages in which pristine domestic interiors, clipped from upscale shelter magazines, are invaded by geometric sculptural elements. They bend, twist and warp the carefully ordered, tastefully decorated view. Like some Minimalist Alice passing through the looking glass of modern living, Ziperstein transforms familiar rooms into alien habitats.