You want to feel artwork before you think about it, to feel guilty, uncomfortable, elated, seduced, or even perplexed. Then you want to kick your brain into gear, to figure why you feel what you feel, what dormant nerve the work has struck. Those situations in which your brain can’t decipher your emotional reaction are initially disappointing but ultimately unmemorable. The times when the feeling doesn’t strike at all and you have to do brain work first can be rewarding though, especially if the emotional connection grows slowly, like latent love reawakened. The worst is when even excessive thinking leads nowhere, and you can’t figure out why anyone felt compelled to bring a certain object or image into the world.

The work in Against the Grain, LACE’s anticipated summer exhibition, falls somewhere between awakening latent affection and provoking the sort of thinking that putters around in indefinite circles. It’s the kind of show that seems too good, too precisely relevant, to be true. And it doesn’t quite come off because it aims for something unreachable.

The title of J.K. Huysmans’ achingly sensuous 1884 novel, A Rebours, has been translated two ways: Against the Grain or Against Nature. Twenty years ago at LACE, Richard Hawkins and Dennis Cooper chose the latter, more epically sensational translation for the name of their co-curated exhibition. Against Nature: A Group Show of Work by Homosexual Men probed the self-indulgence, pessimism, and the pained beauty of art by a marginalized group of Aids crisis era artists. According to those who saw it, Against Nature was a show that made you feel, and it apparently made you think even harder because it’s kept the LA art world thinking for two decades.

Now, Against the Grain adopts the headier translation of Huysmans’ title, purporting to once again deal with decadence and decay, two of the most visually visceral themes available, but in a historically informed manner, taking a moment in the 1980s and interpreting its current relevance.

Entering LACE, you’re immediately confronted by Ryan Taber’s cold slab of concrete, steel and debris. Then you see Julian Hoeber’s photographic chorus of four obscured faces in seas of sequins. Although confusion is a feeling, it’s not one you want to engage right now. If you’re like me, you’ll move into the next room, making a mental note to come back later, at which point you may realize that the contrast between Hoeber’s controlled effeteness and Taber’s carefully intellectualized ruin encapsulates the show’s opacity as much as anything else in the gallery.

As you walk through subsequent rooms, you’ll be struck by symbolism that indulges in itself, cynically nostalgic for its own history even though it knows its history did it no good—Cheyenne Weaver’s linguistic witch hunt caricatures do this, as do Wendell Gladstone’s heavy acrylic paintings of ceremonies and debaucheries. You may also be struck by how even the loquacious titles on the wall labels fail to make these internalized symbols pertinent to you, the viewer.

The cropped, headless red and orange tinted figures in Brian Kennon’s More Decapitation Zine are romantically succinct, suggesting never-quite-occurring, never-ending violence. But the Bruce Hainley Artforum review that Kennon has photographed and hung on the wall asks too much—if you read it, you’d rather read it on your own time, not while standing uncomfortably in the gallery. Still, the introduction of Hainley seems a stroke of genius, since his critically generous prose never forgot the sexiness of decadence, yet decided to favor simple cultural referencing over overwrought rehashing of history.

So what do the contemporary traces of Against Nature look like? Nothing in the show answers this question legibly, not the haunting installation by Brian Bress nor the nerdily poetic video by Kelly Sears that probes perpetual psychological unrest. But maybe no answer is the best answer. What the show clearly communicates is the fact that today’s artists care about yesteryear’s indulgences.

When Huysmans wrote another novel after A Rebours certain critics felt his work had lost its satirical, sensual edge. It had become too intellectual, too boring. Something similar could be said about LACE’s Against the Grain, yet calling the show a failure would be a gross misunderstanding. It does its job quite well. It shows us that decadence and decay were never meant to have a future.

-Catherine Wagley

(Images from top to bottom:  Poster image, Kelly Sears video stills; Ryan Taber, Pompey's Follie: replica of a Yellowstone river fragment with signature carved by Captain William Clark, July 25, 1806, scaled to reveal fossilized material and slab problem on large crimps, 2008, Concrete, steel, construction debris, polyurethane, 13 1/2 x 8 x 12 feet, Courtesy of the artist and Mark Moore Gallery; Brian Bress, Disaster Family, 2007, Disaster blankets, wood, Dimensions variable, Courtesy of the artist)

It’s a beautiful thing, the Voussoir Cloud that architects Lisa Iwamoto and Craig Scott designed. Beautiful, in this particular case, has multiple meanings. It means that the Cloud feigns effortlessness, that it merges delicacy with a paradoxical portliness, and that the transparency of its structure makes it feel pleasantly accessible.

The vaults that make up the Voussoir Cloud—stoutly ephemeral canopies of paper-thin wood laminate petals—rely on each other and three gallery walls for their support. Move one petal and the whole Cloud may be in jeopardy. “The curvature of each petal—it’s dished shape,” reads the wall label, “is dependent upon its adjacent void.” This interdependence makes architecture seem fragile and transient, like something held together by cooperation and careful orchestration rather than fracture-proof foundations and rock solid supports.

There’s no mystery surrounding the Voussoir Cloud. The diagrams on the wall spell out the secrets behind its making: hanging chain models, a Delaunay tessellation, engineering firm Buro Happold, and SCI-Arc students all contributed. Iwamoto and Scott wanted to borrow from architectural mainstays while confusing conventional logic a bit. The Cloud is rendered structural, but made of unsubstantial material. Which makes it atmospheric, more a like sculpture than a functional edifice, and also brings it down to earth.  A thing like this isn’t confounding, even if it confounds structural norms. You can walk around it, in and out of it, see what holds it together, see how it was made, and still delight in the way sunlight shines through the petals. It’s a beautiful thing and well worth a visit.

-Catherine Wagley

(Images top to bottom: Installation view, Photo by Judson Terry, Courtesy of IwamotoScott; Installation view, Image courtesy of IwamotoScott; Installation view, Image courtesy of IwamotoScott)

It’s been slow lately—not many openings and not much to see in Culver City, Chinatown, or any other gallery-heavy LA neighborhood. But late summer art scene lethargy is rapidly ending and I’m unusually excited about September. What I’m most looking forward to: Cycling Apparati, the joint venture by Solway Jones Gallery and High Energy Constructs, partially inspired by a Duchamp piece that it includes, promises to introduce a heady, surreal, idiosyncratic span of artwork from an unconventional span of artists; the coexisting exhibitions of Lisa Lapinski and Eduardo Consuegra, two almost always ineffable object makers, at Richard Telles could end up being an delightfully esoteric brain tease; Julian Hoeber’s solo show at Blum and Poe is alluring because he slips so unexpectedly in and out of brutality, wit, and poetics that its always a surprise to see what he does next. There are also a slew of gauge-the-moment style group shows opening, including one Carl Berg and one at Mark Moore. September should be a good month to be an art-viewing itinerate.