"Intricacy" at ICA

A ceiling detail from the ãIntricacyä<i> </i>installation

at ICA.

A ceiling detail from the ãIntricacyä installation at ICA. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

by Susan Hagen

The expansive philosophy of "more is more," as opposed to a reductive or minimalist philosophy, expresses itself in art or architecture through the formal principle of intricacy. This is the argument of Greg Lynn, architect, theorist and curator of "Intricacy," an exhibition now on display at the ICA. It's a good idea and Lynn supports his premise by gathering together work by a diverse group of international sculptors, painters and architects, along with a video artist and pop star. Nearly all of this work is interesting, personal -- and persistently individualistic.

In many cases, Lynn argues, the notion of intricacy is expressed through the formlessness and endless variability of "the blob." A few of the artists in the show have sought to emphasize the novelty of "the blob" through an ironic use of repetition, bringing to mind the aphorism: "Each person is unique, just like everyone else." All of this hearkens back to the cheery insouciance of postminimalist art, especially Richard Serra's lead splashes and Lynda Benglis' drip sculptures. Fabian Marcaccio's 10 small ink-on-paper drawings from Paint Management Drawings (1988-present), treat blobs and drips of various brushstrokes as a subject to be thoroughly explored. Similarly, in Case #11 (1998), Roxy Paine has pinned down and labeled dozens of putty-colored blobs like an entomology display. Nearby, a label lists descriptions such as "CLR -- Common Low Round," "PC -- Peaky Creamy" and "CF -- Convoluted Fold," a poetic and deliciously precise language for the taxonomy of blobs.

Other artists have found a new use for the geometric perversity offered by intricate computer renderings and mechanical illustrations. METAXY and Karl Chu's drawings, titled X_Phylum (1998), were created by applying algorithms to computer programs for architectural rendering. These combine spiraling meshes of white and pale blue lines on black paper, creating a 3-D grid twisting through space, like wind patterns or dust storms. Untitled (1997), a huge ink-on-paper drawing by Tom Friedman, is made up of thousands of tiny hand-drawn dots connected to their neighbors by fragile lines with arrows. Relationships are thick and dense in the center and sparser around the edge. Strange patterns appear, such as star-shaped halos around some dots and 3-D spatial effects. In both of these cases, the density of lines on the page creates a kind of ghost drawing-within-a-drawing with implications of a cosmological nature.

Lynn has also discovered other occurrences of intricacy in work that articulates vast possibilities within a single object. (Anybody recognize the old-school design principles of variation, texture and detail?) Lynn has included a series of six large hanging lights designed by his own firm, FORM, each a little different than the others. They're made of intricately modeled Fiberglas shells and look like glowing tumescent flowers, vaguely suggestive of the body. Tongxian Model (2001), by the Boston firm Office dA, is another great example of intricacy at work. It's an architectural presentation model, made of unpainted wood, for a cultural center now under construction in Tongxian, China. The model represents a building -- constructed from an encyclopedic list of seamlessly interwoven parts, such as interesting brick patterns, several sets of stairs, passageways, doors and windows -- but it reads like a theater of architectural ideas.

Even though Greg Lynn's theory of intricacy is compelling, the many wonderfully articulate pieces in the show persist independently rather than as a whole. Certain puzzling inclusions, like a James Rosenquist painting and a Björk video, don't advance his argument at all. Still, you've got to admire the friendly inclusiveness (nicely at odds with the many semi-fascist movements and manifestos of art and architecture) of Lynn's theory. To learn more, plan to attend a one-day symposium on March 27 at the ICA with Greg Lynn and an extremely impressive lineup of historians, theorists and architects.

Intricacy

Through April 6, Institute of Contemporary Art, 118 S. 36th St., 215-898-7108