Stitches of life and philosophy

“We will now discuss the Struggle for Existence.” The quote -- one of nearly two dozen that appear in Elaine Reichek’s recent body of work at Shoshana Wayne Gallery -- comes from Charles Darwin and might well serve as an epigraph for the exhibition as a whole.

Reichek’s concern in this work is the concept of creation -- the crux of that perpetual struggle to which Darwin refers -- as it is viewed in Western thought. Her approach to the issue is scholarly: She’s scoured the canons of Christianity, art history, science and science fiction -- four fields with a vested interest in the subject -- then re-inscribed relevant fragments of image and text into her work wholesale, as one might copy them into a notebook or personal journal.

The medium through which she performs this re-inscription, however, is not typically associated with scholarship: embroidery. Her principal format is the sampler, a mode of needlework that was traditionally used as a teaching tool for young women. Her adoption of the form isn’t ironic or glib, but respectfully in keeping with the sampler’s original educational purpose. Instead of learning the alphabet and simple arithmetic, however, Reichek is grappling here with Genesis, sorting through Milton and Schopenhauer, and contemplating the role of the artist in the cosmic order.

At the same time, she is reclaiming the tradition of the sampler as a historically valuable body of texts on par with those of art history and science fiction, quoting extant samplers as she does Paul Gauguin and Ray Bradbury, and citing their authors appropriately. The power of the work lies in the intelligence of its many juxtapositions, such as a lofty statement by artist Robert Smithson (“The nonexistence of things is what the artist takes for ‘materials’ ”) with a verse from Genesis (“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light”); and an image of Michelangelo’s famous fresco, “The Creation of Adam,” with a mournful lament by the monster in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” (“Oh, Frankenstein, remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy”).

In suggesting connections between these and other seemingly disparate texts, Reichek draws from each a subtle new dimension. She has been at the business of embroidery for some time -- longer than it’s been respectable for an artist to embrace a feminine craft -- and she seems here to have reached a state of real synthesis. Despite an extremely awkward installation (the gallery space is simply too big for the work), the exhibition takes what began as a politically astute concept to a level of philosophic inquiry.

Shoshana Wayne Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 453-7535, through Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday.

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Shedding the layers of identity

Meg Cranston’s new exhibition at the Happy Lion in Chinatown consists of five life-size pinatas fashioned in the artist’s own image. They are realistically shaped, with willowy limbs and delicate, although expressionless, faces. Each is stylishly dressed in a different crepe-paper outfit. Hung from the ceiling at various heights and angles like elements of some sacrificial ritual, they make for a strangely unnerving installation.

It is a relatively simple body of work in itself, but one that cleverly aligns several potent strains of symbolism and association. The history of the pinata, like that of many other now-secular traditional objects, is rooted in both paganism and Catholicism, which lends a curious duality of implications: fertility and sin, celebration and destruction, abundance and aggression.

In giving her pinatas a female form, Cranston also alludes to the complex relationship between femininity and violence, tapping into the fear of physical vulnerability on the one hand (it is all too easy to imagine one of these figures buckling under the blow of a baseball bat), and culturally ingrained masochism on the other. At the same time, there is something regenerative about the function of the pinata.

In issuing replica after replica of herself in different outfits or costumes, one imagines Cranston shedding extraneous layers of identity, perhaps in the interest of arriving at some purer state of self. The title of the series, “Magical Death,” would seem to support such a reading.

The most striking of the five sculptures, hung at the center of the gallery, is clothed in pink boots and a hood-to-ankle bodysuit of frayed, multi-colored paper, her hands open in a gesture of receptivity that is echoed in her upturned face. Cranston looks here like some sort of shamanic rainbow goddess, suggesting, perhaps, that the principles of creation and destruction are not so far removed.

The Happy Lion, 963 Chung King Road, Los Angeles, (213) 625-1360, through Jan. 11.

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The elegant art of paring down

The images of Swiss photographer Olivier Christinat feel a little like those stridently spare, slate-and-glass-type living spaces one often sees featured in highbrow style magazines -- that is to say, elegant but hard-won. A photograph, like a home, is exceptionally conducive to clutter.

Minimalism is attainable, one might say, only with great discipline and considerable wealth: discipline to keep the clutter out and wealth to ensure that what remains is worthy of its exclusivity. Christinat certainly has the discipline.

Each of the 18 works assembled at the Paul Kopeikin Gallery is a single concept self-consciously pared down to the fewest possible elements: the blank wall and floor of a studio, one or two nondescript props, and a few figures, either nude or clad simply in dark, solid colors. The tone is dry but refined. As for the wealth -- that is, the conceptual currency necessary to justify such a spare handling of objects -- it varies. The exhibition -- Christinat’s first in the United States -- draws from three series made over the last six years. Perhaps the least compelling of these is a suite of color photographs featuring several attractive, identically posed, bare-chested women. Although there is something interesting about the differences that emerge between the women -- despite their compositional conformity -- one could probably find something just as interesting about attractive, bare-chested women in any setting.

Considerably more resonant are the black-and-white photographs from Christinat’s “Apocrypha” series. Here, the themes -- all loosely centered on the Bible’s noncanonical texts -- are substantial enough to fill the ample space opened up by the artist’s economy of means. Although the images included here don’t represent the best of the series, they are quite stirring.

In his most recent series, Christinat reenacts found press photographs using only a few modestly expressive actors. Though these images seem considerably less interesting than the originals they’re based on -- they are stripped entirely of context, location and genuine feeling -- the difference is instructive. It raises compelling questions regarding the function of gesture and emotional identification in the mass media.

Paul Kopeikin Gallery, 138 N. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 937-0765, through Jan. 7. Closed Sunday and Monday.