'Busted'
Through July 24, New Langton Arts

NEW LANGTON ARTS' exhibit "Busted" presents works by Felipe Dulzaides and Robin Rhode that explore the physical and ideological dimensions of space. For Bust Bustling, Dulzaides has stacked two rotating slide projectors filled with photographs of monuments taken in diverse settings from various vantage points. The top projector shows pictures of the monuments, while the bottom projector shows pictures of the bases that support them. The projectors throw the images randomly, creating new monuments with elements of the originals torn from their original surroundings. The results are rich with irony, but the strength of the piece ultimately lies in how surprisingly well these collages work, memorializing unnamed heroes and unknown events. In a video installation titled Big Surf, Dulzaides voyeuristically combs through the crowd at a wave pool in the desert. The piece, with its juxtaposition of the crowd's shill screams and the pathetic crest of the man-made wave, invites the viewer to consider the artificiality of modern life. The video is projected through the hole in a lifeguard's chair that has been converted into a toilet seat, apparently to question the crowd's naive acceptance of this artificial scene. But the effect is the opposite, cynically distancing the artist and audience from the subject of the work (as if we know better) and so precluding whatever reflection the video might provoke on the world in which we live. Rhode's artwork questions the politics of space by using graffiti techniques in a fine art setting. Of course, this has been attempted before; but Rhode draws on the formal possibilities presented by graffiti, whereas other artists typically limit themselves to reiterating its stylistic contents. Stacked Drawing presents a series of 14 black-and-white photographs of the artist standing on crumbled cinder blocks at the foot of a concrete wall. In each of the pictures, he can be seen at different stages of lifting the cinder blocks and tossing them into imaginary stacks that he represents by painting them on the wall in front of him. The series produces an animated effect, something between static and moving images, and serves to document Rhode's work as a performance – with the can of white paint he uses included in the pictures. While you're at the gallery, be sure to check out Renee Delores's "Pink Mink" in New Langton Arts' Musée d'Honneur Minuscule. Tues.-Sat., noon-6 p.m., 1246 Folsom, S.F. (415) 626-5416. (Clark Buckner)