AT THE GALLERIES: Sculptor creates entities from objects

Sculpture has a funny way of making you feel temporary. Its three-dimensional presence (when it’s done well) somehow takes on the fourth dimension of time. Sure, it says, you’re standing there, living and breathing. But I’ll be here long after you’re gone.

It’s true of painting as well, but the very space occupied by a piece of sculpture gives it a life that paintings don’t have. Think of the legend that, when he finished the “Moses,” Michelangelo struck it with a hammer and cried, “Now, speak!”

Joe Brubaker’s figures in wood don’t so much look like they could talk to you as act for you — as in stage acting (on view at Sue Greenwood Fine Art, 330 North Coast Hwy). His sculptures could be in costume for a Samuel Beckett play.

Take “Buster” for instance. It (I have to resist the urge to say “he”) stands 26 inches high — hardly dominating. But the way Brubaker shapes the 4x4 that forms the body gives “Buster” a sense of solitariness, a man alone in the universe.

The edges are barely chiseled off the corners, but the yellow stain makes him seem in costume, one red arm attached with a single nail as if he were in motley. The white stain on “Buster’s” face (and indeed on all the faces) seems like makeup.

The names Brubaker gives his work suit the figures in uncanny ways. “Buster” seems to be a victim of his own timidity, the way a buster would be.

“Titus” emerges from a simple set of found objects, titan-like. The heavy pier that forms the body is dark with age, covered in residual red paint and still bears a large hole from its original use. A rusted sheet of metal forms a miter-like hat and a strip of rubber forms a ruff-like collar (both seem to be motifs in Brubaker’s work).

The arms of “Titus” are raised to the sky, and the found-object wood forms wing-like sleeves. He is a bishop, a chess piece, an alter figure. He abides. Yet, he also seems comic, like those sepia-tinted films of crazy inventors leaping off buildings in flying machines. “Titus” thinks he’s flying, but he couldn’t be any more solidly on the ground.

The key to Brubaker’s success is the way he assembles and fashions his found objects, combining them with precisely sculpted heads and hands carved in wood. When you gaze carefully at each figure, you can see each individual object, sometimes even identify its source. “Paul,” for instance, has a sort of bib cut from a license plate.

But each sculpture is greater than its parts; that is to say, you are never distracted away from the character and form of the piece by the nails, bits of metal, rubber or even by the paint Brubaker adds. Taken together, they seem organic.

“Beth” features two very prominent butterfly joints, for example, remnants of a joiner’s work, trying to keep the wood from splitting. She has wire wrapped around her head like hair, and three long nails with flattened heads protruding from her like the foundation of a halo.

Rather than think about all these bits, she seems to me like a figure from Cirque de Soleil.

I don’t want to give the impression that Brubaker’s work is cute, or even simply funny — far from it. The shocked expression on “Beth’s” face seems just on the edge of horror.

It is the darker side of Brubaker’s work that is most interesting, the nearly mocking humor. The mere title of “Trojan Woman” evokes all kinds of reactions in a kind of “oh, that’s funny ... but wait a minute” way.

“Trojan Woman” is a female torso pieced out of rusted metal resting on a flatbed cart with rubber wheels. Nothing seems to have been used “as is.” It’s all formed by Brubaker’s hand. Nails suggest panties, a belly button, etc. There’s even a chain to pull the cart, but it’s in such advanced stages of rust it seems almost lacy. Has she been pulled into the gallery to fool us? Should we beware Brubakers bearing gifts?

The series of busts in the show evoke similar reactions. They’re like close-ups of the full-body works. Here, the focus is on the expression. “Roberto” seems enigmatically grim. There is some resignation here, untroubled in a vaguely bored way, the way a mortician might get bored.

It is for all these reasons that I think of Brubaker as an existential artist. He’s less successful with straightforward mixed-media work (like “Persimmon,” a square, nonrepresentational work). His best figures represent ontological problems, the difficulty of being in the world, the absurdity of existence.

“Paul” stands on spindly legs, clothed in dramatic black, with big sleeves and an even bigger hat. He’s wrapped in metal, and his face has black painted lips and dark nostrils. He looks like he’s walking on stilts. He’s propped up, extended, fully equipped.

But he’s all dressed up with no place to go, dramatic, but slightly comic, facing an indifferent universe, the way we all are.

The show runs through Sept. 30.