'Fast Forward II'
Through Feb. 9, UC Berkeley Art Museum

AS SOLEMN AS Stonehenge, Susan Magnus's Lifetime stretches out 14 feet from the gallery wall. Made up of a stack of magazines, the sculpture might seem more at home in a library than in a museum, but Magnus's choice of reading material, National Geographic, turns this work into something more than the sum of its parts. She has collected every issue since 1957, the year of her birth. These days you can buy all of the issues on a single CD-ROM, but for our grandparents' generation, the magazine was something to keep and treasure as a travel guide, or as reference material for kids' book reports; you can often measure the years someone spent in an old house by his or her accumulation of National Geographics. Magnus marks the years of her life by adding to the sculpture annually. It's a visual representation of one woman's life, an homage to an old-fashioned manner of timekeeping, and a subtle gibe at museums, libraries, and other institutions that, like grandparents' basements, house and preserve what we'll one day think of as "stuff that takes up space." It's also a handy solution to what must have been quite a storage problem at Magnus's house! Other notable artworks in this show, which features new museum acquisitions from the past five years, include two pieces that transform consumer products into something completely different and unexpectedly beautiful: Jeanne Friscia's kaleidoscopic digital images based on chicken and fish meat and Rachel Neubauer's biomorphic Buttons and Grafts sculptures. Also check out a collection of 15 handmade books by James Castle, a deaf artist who never learned to speak, read, or use sign language, but whose art reveals an uncanny understanding of words as symbols and objects. Wed.-Sun., 11 a.m.-7 p.m., 2626 Bancroft Way, Berk. $8, $5 seniors and youths, free for 12 and under, members, and UC Berkeley students and faculty (free Thursday). (510) 642-0808. (Lindsey Westbrook)