A project rooted in obsession

In an era of near-epidemic distraction, with media, advertising and various technological gadgets drawing the attention of the average individual in a dozen different directions at any given moment, the visual arts have become a haven for what may prove a radical, even profound, form of resistance: unmitigated obsession. In art, as in few other disciplines, one is free -- even encouraged -- to cultivate a whim and pursue it with singular purpose, far beyond the bounds of logic, practicality or the typical consumer’s attention span.

Few artists in recent memory exploit the potential of obsession as thoroughly, or as winningly, as Joel Tauber. His quixotic “Sick-Amour,” an ongoing public project that he’s configured into a gallery exhibition at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, manages to combine conceptual rigor, humor, social critique and ecological preservation -- all within the scope of one rather peculiar fixation.

The unlikely object of Tauber’s obsession is a sycamore tree in the parking lot of the Pasadena Rose Bowl. Likening himself to the Persian emperor Xerxes, who was said to have so loved a particular sycamore that he adorned the tree with jewelry and assigned it a bodyguard, Tauber has launched a one-man campaign -- initially guerrilla-style, now assisted by several nonprofits (principally LAXART), Rose Bowl officials and the city of Pasadena -- to rescue the tree from neglect, memorialize its plight and celebrate its unsung contribution to the community. The goal is to pull up 1,900 square feet of asphalt around the tree, which hadn’t even a curb’s worth of protection when Tauber found it, replace it with a layer of mulch and turn the space into an outdoor “tree museum.”

The exhibition at Vielmetter, besides documenting the public aspect of the project (as well as presumably raising money for it), also enriches it considerably. As compelling as the endeavor is on a conceptual level, it’s the presence of Tauber’s fervent, somewhat neurotic, irresistibly endearing voice, captured in monologues on each of the installation’s 12 video monitors, that gives it its breadth, depth and heart. The installation is fashioned to resemble a tree, with the monitors suspended like fruit on branches made from black plastic tubing. Two long, painted foam and resin “earrings” also dangle from the branches, while nearby Tauber displays jewelry intended for humans: leaf pendants, fruit ball earrings, and a locket containing seeds from the tree, all cast in gold. Large, handsome photographs of the tree are posted around the gallery.

Each monitor features a loop of tree-related footage and a voice-over discussing some aspect of the project. The breadth is impressive.

In one, Tauber surveys the history of environmental philosophy. In another, he discusses the tree’s cellular composition, citing the cabala while pondering his inability to penetrate the tree’s essential nature. In another, he describes the various pests and fungi that threaten its well-being, the most despised of which, from his perspective, is the lace bug, which colonizes the leaves in vast numbers, extracts nutrients and deposits feces. (“I still can’t get over that,” he cries. “What audacity!”)

More impressive, however, is the ease with which he winds this information into his personal experience with the tree, and the passion that underlies his portrayal of that experience. He relates his joy at the appearance of springtime buds, his horror at returning to the lot one day to find the tree roughly pruned, his scorn for the buses that jostle the branches during a football game and his empathy, inspired by the discovery of numerous used condoms, for the tree’s profound isolation.

This sympathy -- informed, he says, by his own unmarried, childless status -- inspired a zealous attempt to help facilitate the tree’s reproduction. With the help of the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants, he succeeded on the second try, producing 71 “tree babies” in February. (“This is one of the greatest days of my life,” he relates breathlessly.)

These monologues tip, occasionally, into something like parody, but they never feel the least insincere. Tauber is clearly aware of the absurdity of his quest, but aware also of the strategic advantage that absurdity offers -- in disarming the habitual defenses of his potential viewers, for instance, and jarring them into thinking differently about so familiar an object.

In the den of distraction that is the Rose Bowl parking lot, his obsession functions as a sort of spotlight, illuminating, through the tree, our dysfunctional relationship with nature. And after a while, his conviction comes to seem rather more sane than blanketing the Earth with asphalt.

Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, 5795 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, (323) 933-2117, through April 28. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.vielmetter.com

Menace lurks amid the colorful chaos

“Gyre Carling,” Iva Gueorguieva’s second solo show at Carl Berg Gallery, takes its name from a rather nasty figure in Scottish folklore: an ogress who pilfered women’s un-spun flax on the last night of every year and “levit upoun Christiane menis flesche,” according to one middle-Scottish poem.

The figures in Gueorguieva’s paintings appear only fleetingly amid chaotic swirls of color and line, so it’s difficult to say whether the lady makes a personal appearance. But the reference underscores the folkloric sense of menace that imbues the work, epitomized by the title of one piece: “These Are Places Where Nothing Is Wrong but There Is Something Wrong.”

The paintings are large, unabashedly colorful and dizzyingly frenetic. The term “gyre” also refers to a circular motion or vortex, as in an ocean current -- and all of the works seem to contain several such currents, all of them sweeping up clouds of debris as they go. There are dim figures, obscure suggestions of objects, traces of architecture -- all poised, it seems, on the verge of disintegration.

I suspect that Gueorguieva’s complex sense of compositional space would benefit from a little less pictorial clutter. But the pleasures of that clutter -- particularly the pleasure of Gueorguieva’s sprightly, agile line -- are such that one is reluctant to urge her in that direction too quickly.

Carl Berg Gallery, 6018 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 931-6060, through April 14. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.carlberggallery.com

Solo comeback plays it too safe

Painter, public artist, critic, publisher, editor, curator, professor, lecturer and dean, since 1991, of one of the country’s top art schools (CalArts), Thomas Lawson is a formidably accomplished figure. “History/Painting” at LAXART, however -- his first solo exhibition in seven years -- is an uneven comeback, containing one really dazzling painting and several interesting threads, but disappointingly short on risk or revelation.

Most of the paintings depict maps or globes, rendered from various perspectives in fluctuating combinations of bold color. A series of smaller works (12 inches by 12 inches) depicts heads of men, drawn from old paintings and news photographs.

The one dazzling painting, “Red Planet,” roughly 6 feet by 8 feet, is a flat map whose continents shift from ultramarine to indigo to navy blue, with touches of butter yellow on a few of the northernmost islands -- all floating in a sea the color of drying blood. The colors are rich and peculiar, their application painterly and engrossing. Other works fall short of this intensity.

The show has the feel of one who enjoys painting, knows painting and has ideas about painting, but who lacks the drive to attack it wholeheartedly and break through a certain comfort zone. Lawson plays with color and texture without pushing either very hard. More problematically, he gestures toward issues of globalism and war without posing any particularly challenging questions.

LAXART, 2640 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 559-0166, through April 28. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.laxart.org

Fresh perspective on abstract forms

Drawing heavily from the lessons of early 20th century abstraction, Berlin-based sculptor Thomas Kiesewetter makes work that wouldn’t look out of place in certain historical surveys -- of Cubism, say, Constructivism, or some branches of American assemblage. Because he gets those lessons right, however, espousing early abstraction’s vigorous relationship to form rather than merely imitating the trappings of a given style, the work feels current and lively.

Constructed initially from cardboard and then cast in bronze, the eight mid-size sculptures in Kiesewetter’s second solo show at Roberts & Tilton feel simultaneously spontaneous and substantial, agile and grounded. Spindly elements balance thicker, more stable ones; buoyancy flirts with weight.

The show’s 10 drawings are looser and more colorful than the sculptures, suggesting another influence: popular animation, or the Pop-infused work of Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine or Philip Guston. They’re jaunty, clever, appealing works that speak to the timeless pleasures of rigorously considered form.

Roberts & Tilton, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 549-0223, through April 14. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.robertsandtilton.com