Art on Art: Details, Details

By Art Harris

Henry James once criticized an art that "is a thing of parts rather than an interesting whole". Oriane Stender and Christel Dillbohner -- two Bay Area artists now showing in galleries at Bergamot Station -- provide complicated details that make up a whole greater than the sum of their parts. Curiously, James wrote of the realist painter Ernest Meissonier, while Dillbohner and Stender are not particularly tied to realism at all.

Dillbohner (a native of Koln, Germany, now resident in Berkeley), works with a variety of materials and sensory appeals. Some of her work is almost traditional painting, but most of this show is made up of constructions (generally using plant matter), assemblages (such as boxes full of small treasures and reminiscences of nature), and arrangements that are site-specific. In this show ("About Sippwells and Other Places"), she works in part with memories and photos from recent trips to Australia, in such works as charcoal arrangements on the gallery floor and "Noctourne" paintings. The Noctournes seem to refer to Australian Aboriginal motifs even though she created them before her visits to Darwin, Alice Springs and other areas Antipodean.

The initial impact of the exhibit comes at the doorway, with the pleasant and mildly sweet odor of beeswax. She has used the wax to impregnate sheets of hanging paper. These large hanging sheets are further worked with myriad small holes, so they may bring to mind the idea of flattened beehives.

Stender weaves her way with money. Quite literally. Instead of hiding her money under a mattress, she has sliced up U.S. currency notes and reassembled the bills with interlacings of other paper to create delicate quilts of color and wit. With a bow towards the primacy of money over art, she has composed miniature variations on the art of Andy Warhol (including some flowers and the still florids Ms. M. Monroe), Gary Indiana (still and forever in "LOVE"), Escher and Mondrian. Accompanying them are some compositions that owe nothing to anyone else except G. Washington, A. Lincoln and others in the Land of Loot. The smoothly drooping and pooling "Plant Life" is notable among these pieces.

In the same gallery with Stender's work is a presentation of careul and interesting photographs by Jack Butler, as well as a trio of intriguing paintings remaining from a recent exhibition by Olga Seem.

The intricacies of Stender's work and the less-obvious carefulness of Dillbohner's suggest they both may have what LA artist Barbara Strasen calls "Attention Surfeit Disorder" Your own attention might appreciate being turned to their work.

Bergamot Station is at 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica. Dillbohner is showing at the Ellen Kim Murphy Gallery (G-5), until June 17, and Stender is at Frumkin/Duval Gallery (F-1), until June 3.