Two New Outlooks on Conceptual Art
Idea-centered pieces make a comeback
KENNETH BAKER, Chronicle Art Critic
Wednesday, July 31, 1996

The Bay Area has a surprisingly rich history of conceptual art, in which meaning or tactics weigh more than aesthetics.

Two current shows suggest that idea- centered art is making a sort of comeback in the mid-1990s: ``The Addition and Subtraction of Skin: Works by David Ireland and Dorothy Cross'' at the Center for the Arts at Yerba Buena Gardens, and the group show ``Nothing Matters'' at Refusalon. One reason for this development is that familiar excuses for art -- speculative investment, political challenge, hip decoration -- have lost credibility lately. Art might as well stake itself on ideas, since so little is happening -- or ``nothing matters'' -- on other levels. Another reason conceptual work can get traction here is that it depends heavily on the commitment of an audience.

Minus recognition by spectators, a lot of conceptual art is so unprepossessing physically that it just disappears into the background or reverts to raw material. The Bay Area art scene is now in a similarly vulnerable state where its future seems to hinge on a large but ambivalent public committing itself to art as a civic reality that only shared belief and desire can sustain. `Nothing Matters' Is the One. If the title ``Nothing Matters'' prompts you to respond ``It does?,'' then you will have caught an inkling of the smirking nihilism that informs Refusalon's show. No single category can cover the range of work here, contributed by 19 artists, but a smoldering humor is pervasive.

For example, working with the idea of getting something for nothing, Guy Overfelt consulted toll-free phone listings and ordered shipped to the gallery a heap of unwanted stuff that is free on request, which makes up his piece.

With a nod to Andy Warhol's silk-screened replicas of Brillo cartons, Samuel Yates stacked in the stairwell a tower of cardboard boxes, each blazoned with the word ``Blah.'' A joking homage to Constantin Brancusi's ``Endless Column,'' Yates' piece pretends it has plenty of room for content but no use for it.

Richard Haden does the trickiest work here, presenting what appears to be a taped-up, labeled cardboard box made of a block of mahogany, while Robert Ortbal comes closest to the zero degree of art, merely having swabbed on soapy water to create a kind of hilly horizon-line along the top of a glass partition.

Between these extremes falls work such as Norma Yorba's ``Stack'' of galvanized metal pipes, each set of which is linked to form something like a square doughnut.

The finished form recalls early sculptures by Donald Judd and Robert Morris, but it might as easily be the work of a bored or crazed plumber. There is much, much more in the same vein of quirky low definition. If an out-of-town visitor asks what is the gallery show to see in San Francisco this summer, ``Nothing Matters'' is the one.