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An exhibition of six sculptors at the L.A. Institute of Contemporary Art is the first flourish of LAICA's new director, Ben Marks. Perhaps it is the first glow of the sunset for LAICA's quarters on Robertson Boulevard, since they are looking for a more felicitously placed facility. That aside, "Sculpture Part I" (through Feb. 15) is such a routine survey of local artists it takes on a kind of universal quality, as if one might reasonably expect to find a virtually identical show in any city where contemporary art has a purchase. Cleveland Sculpture Part I. Lyon Sculpture Part I. Dusseldorf Sculpture Part I. It's kind of comforting, like knowing that if worse comes to worse you can always find a Burger King.
It's the sort of event that sets the mind scavenging about outside the thing in itself in hopes of striking associations that will lend it significance. The attempt does not merely result in the expected wan trickle of serendipity but in a huge flood of cultural linkages that identify this modest exercise as yet another symptom of a culture in the grip of a long, pervasive and irreversible sea change from the Modernist sensibility to that of the Post-Modern.
Art used to be linked to the overworld in such subtle ways that the connection was invisible to most people causing art to seem separate and esoteric. Today, if you want to find out what is going on, the information is available in the comic strips of the daily paper. Recently, Garry Trudeau's wonderful "Doonesbury" delighted artniks with an episode in which Michael's wife J.J., an "emerging artist," receives her first commission. She is to decorate the johns in an East Village club. Despite the fact she gets no fee for this task, she sets about it...