Frances Stark at CRG

There was something very appealing about Frances Stark's fourth exhibition at CRG, "In and On an Unergonomic Mind," but there was also something determinedly elusive about that appeal. L.A.-based Stark, as an artist and author (her collected writings were published in 2003), not unnaturally factors writing into her art-making, using text and materials often related to the office (staples, tape, glassine, ink, paper, brads, carbon paper, string) as the subject and substance of her handcrafted collages, drawings and three-dimensional works. Whimsical, self-conscious, with borrowed notations and quotes scattered throughout, these 11 not necessarily related works deal vaguely, dreamily with workplace matters.

While ostensibly adult in their concerns--as the office references suggest--several of these pieces have the ingenious, throw-away charm of school projects pieced together by a clever child. The three snowy white "Soft Secretaries," for example, edged here and there with bright colors, offer neatly stapled and taped-on folders and envelopes in which to file tests, reports and supplies of the sort associated with schoolrooms past. Then there are the two collages depicting peacocks. One shows its subject from the front, with a pretty, fanned-out mosaic tail made of small cutouts from mass-mailers; here the bird (presumably a stand-in for the artist/writer) clutches a pencil. The other is a rear view that is all too bird, debunking the myth and glamour of the critter/creator's facade. There are also two chrysanthemum pictures, Shaggy Headed and Showy Headed, the curly petals of which are snipped from invitation cards, made, it seems, just for fun. It's back to the cubicle with In and In, two towers made from cut bands of glossy ads that suggest out-of-control to-do boxes, an overly familiar sight to many of us. But we might question how they got that way. Finally, there is Stark's alter ego, the comic-strip character Cathy, seen here in three small collage-and-ink drawings, surrounded by tiny, typed, mysterious sequences of words. One of these works is called Shhh, having to think--an admonition that points us back to the free-ranging, ruminative, anti-bureaucratic activity that lay at the core of this wryly humorous, bright and shining show.

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