Things change
'The Way Things Are' surveys David Ireland's rich lifetime of art.

By Glen Helfand

THERE ARE THOSE rare artists whose work filters seamlessly into the world, and David Ireland is one. A broader Bay Area public has witnessed the Mission District-dwelling artist's work by walking past his large-scale outdoor sculpture at Ikea in Emeryville than knows his gallery and museum projects. His 12-foot-tall steel club chair, positioned between the parking lot and the entry to the global furniture purveyor, is a gesture that reduces seating to simple geometry while enlarging the form to make us all feel gleefully childlike. It's a piece that's simultaneously playful, formal, and humble.

There's an even grander chair sculpture in "The Art of David Ireland: The Way Things Are," the satisfying career survey of Ireland's work at the Oakland Museum of California, and the interior beneath it is large enough to function as a reading room. Here it's an element that cozily evokes kooky architecture (giant doughnuts and brown derbies in Los Angeles) while implicating the viewer in the artwork. As I perused the literature beneath that chair, an elderly gentleman asked in all seriousness if I was part of the piece.

Ireland has had a thing for chairs throughout his colorful career, and there are other examples in the exhibition, but they're not exactly a signature element. Much of his practice has involved a free-ranging approach to media and strategy that makes his work both elusive and unexpectedly engaging. Ireland's color palette is muted, with natural, earthy grays and the hues of dried mustard, and his found materials are unassuming: mason jars, battered old brooms, bent wire, cast-off furniture, cheesecloth, and construction debris. He calls softball-size spheres of concrete that he's juggled for hours Dumb Balls. The pleasure of these latter objects, which are so perfect as to seem utterly organic, is as much in the making – it takes nearly 15 hours of throwing the wet concrete from one hand to the other to make the things – as it is in the smooth, simple form that results.

The show, organized by Oakland Museum curator Karen Tsujimoto, unfolds in the museum's somewhat awkward space, offering delightful surprises at every turn (one involves a flying angel). It brings together some 80 pieces, mostly sculpture, that illuminate Ireland's talent. The exhibition trades a bit on the artist's colorful biography: after studying at California College of the Arts and Crafts in the 1950s, he shunned art to lead safaris in Africa. He didn't pick up art again until he was in his 40s, with a matured sensibility. Now, in his early 70s, he's the subject of this large-scale museum show, which will tour the country.

Ireland's greatest work is his Victorian home on Capp Street, a building he's resided in since 1975 and has turned into a living art installation. Over the years the tall, silver-haired artist has peeled back and sealed in the layers of the building's history – capturing cracks and abrasions in an amber varnish and turning objects found in and around the abode into evocative sculptures. The process is utterly accessible and visceral. It's so easy to tap into the fulfilling nature of Ireland's labor in tending to his home, a process illuminated in the exhibition with historic and recent video documentation.

Ireland, who even manages to wring dazzle out of a decade's worth of toilet paper roll cores, is often associated with his peers and the school of Bay Area conceptualism. That 1970s-born movement is enjoying a surge of interest. (Often acknowledged as the leader of the movement, Tom Marioni has a major show at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts next year, while sculptor-video maker Paul Kos's Berkeley Art Museum-organized retrospective wowed New York City audiences, usually oblivious to the art that's blossomed in northern California). Ireland's art is clearly connected to his pals', yet it's perhaps too idiosyncratic for easy categorization. He often states that he's never quite sure what his work is about, though the pleasure in the making is almost always evident. The catalog suggests that at the art's root is a Zen-like acceptance of the absurdities of life, befitting the last-word simplicity of the exhibition's title, "The Way Things Are." Indeed, it is.

'The Art of David Ireland: The Way Things Are,' runs through March 14. Wed.-Sat., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sun., noon-5 p.m. (first Fri., 10 a.m.-9 p.m.), Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak, Oakl. $8, $5 seniors and students. (510) 238-2200.