Review: Elad Lassry turns to sculpture, but still asks the same question

Sculpture is relatively new to Elad Lassry’s work, which to date has focused primarily on performance, film and photography. But six recent -- and decidedly strange -- examples are of a piece with his provocatively developing art.

At David Kordansky Gallery, where the sculptures are shown with a dozen wall-works incorporating photographs, they take the form of baskets carved from solid blocks of wood. He calls them “carriers,” presumably because baskets carry things and art carries meanings.

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These bulky baskets are not hollow, though. Like a three-dimensional picture of a basket, each sculpture radiates dense physical and visual weight. Thick handles suggest that at least two people would be required to lift it. The sculptures’ materiality is set against an array of pictures that adorn them.

The flat surface plane across the top of each basket is indented, hollowed out, to yield simple shapes of fruits or vegetables painted in flat, bright colors. Shiny painted apples, carrots, eggplants or strawberries pull negative space into positive visual form.

Lassry makes the sculptures from claro walnut, a heavily grained, cognac-colored material favored by woodworkers. The wood’s dark, linear patterns add a lively drawing element to the dense physical object, mixing up two and three dimensions.

Not unlike the hybrid works of the late Richard Artschwager, for whom baskets were also a prominent pictorial motif, these peculiar sculptures loosely suggest furniture. A picture of a thing is simultaneously an actual thing, and you could stub your toe on it.

Lassry’s art is an inquiry into what a picture is -- an ancient conundrum for artists that has been given new life in our woozy age of novel digital ephemera. Pictures aren’t what they used to be. These disorienting analog sculptures oddly clarify digital perception.

David Kordansky Gallery, 5130 Edgewood Pl., (323) 935-3030, through Nov. 5. Closed Sun. and Mon. www.davidkordanskygallery.com

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