Jeff Colson at Ace

Art in America, Feb, 2004 by Janet Koplos

It's hard to say what made the strongest impression in Jeff Colson's recent show, which included sculptures in fiberglass, bronze and cast iron as well as paintings in watercolor, ink and oil. That diversity of mediums was certainly striking, but the echoing of forms and images from one work to another, and the familiar subjects isolated and made strange also had an impact. The L.A. artist (b. 1957), who had his first solo exhibition in 1989, presented a dozen or so works (dated 2001 to 2003) that played back and forth across a large gallery at the east end of Ace's massive space.

Figure, a watercolor on paper measuring 15 by 11 1/2 inches, illusionistically depicts strips of torn white paper that seem to curve out from the wall. Across the room, a wall piece called Figure 2 repeats the composition with thicker forms constructed of bondo and resin that actually projects 4 1/2 inches. A whole family of works centered on two bronze hemispheres about a foot tall with bubbled surfaces, both called Incident. They sat on the floor, widely separated. Each looks like a cluster of cells or a deposit of insect eggs or perhaps some warty creature that might suddenly move. On a wall was a 50-inch-square inked canvas called Moon that showed the pocked lunar face, which recalls in two dimensions the protruding hemispheres of the Incident sculptures. Incident (Wall) is a 24-by-24-by-8-inch green fiberglass piece that has the same cluster profile, flattened into a seven-lobed daisy.

The remaining works in the show, among them horns and bunting, allude to display or celebration. Big Top is a wall construction of fiberglass, steel, oil and twine in the form of five red-and-white tent awnings separated by dangling strings. Its kin, shown across the room, is a 146-inch-long oil painting depicting five tan draperies hanging on a wooden and black-painted wall. Related to these two was the only work shown outside this room: in a closet-size niche in the hallway was Awning, a forlorn-looking green construction that seemed abandoned.

The formal relationships among the works are interesting yet puzzling. There's a discomfiting feeling of something missing. This aura is acute in Podium, a platform made of three boxes of differing heights, as if for Olympic winners (fiberglass, oil and wood, 37 by 35 by 80 inches). It is draped with a cloth, perhaps to protect it from dust until it is used again. The structure looks slightly dog-eared and very vacant, like the tattered debris of a celebrity event.

In some works, isolated display calls attention to mundane forms, as if they were sufficient in themselves. But more often the feeling Colson elicits is an overwhelming and enervating banality. His repetition and alteration do not add enriching layers of meaning to the forms he chooses but rather empty them out and reveal them as plaintive and homeless.