Stolen Glances

Mark Shetabi, <i>Bedroom </i>(2003), mixed media.

Mark Shetabi, Bedroom (2003), mixed media.

Mark Shetabi lets us look through his peepholes.

by Susan Hagen

Rooms that can be seen and not entered -- such as strangers’ houses illuminated at night, dollhouses, museum period rooms and stage sets -- all feed the imagination of the beholder. Combining a balance of intimacy and distance, they imply an unspoken drama of human presence and absence. Similarly, in modern sculptures like Duchamp’s Etant Donné or Giacometti’s Palace at 4 a.m., they’re used as a psychological device, creating a sense of isolation, emotion and magic in a contained three-dimensional space. Mark Shetabi, a promising young local artist, uses this device with great originality to create visions of a contemporary and not-so-perfect world, full of discomfort, ennui -- and an unexpected peacefulness.

In this show, his first at Locks (and his most ambitious to date), Shetabi has built a series of five tableaux of minimalist interiors and spare landscapes. The pieces, each seen only through a single tiny peephole, are all dated 2003 and their construction from a variety of "home-depot" materials -- sheetrock, metal, MDF, Plexiglas, masonite, duct tape, etc. -- clearly involved a Herculean effort by the artist, the gallery staff and a slew of friends of the artist. On entering the gallery, the viewer is greeted with the distasteful sight of a typical modern office interior, with a series of radiating corridors dotted with plain gray doors fitted with stainless steel locks. A system of brightly illuminated Plexiglas ceiling tiles has been fitted into the high arching space of Locks Gallery's first floor. It's a harsh beginning, but then slowly the magic begins.

The viewer is required to stand and squint through each peephole into Shetabi's five installations. In each a room and landscape, without intimate and personal details, is visible. Bedroom shows a scene of a sparsely furnished bedroom at night. The "bed," made of a white rectangular solid slightly raised off the floor, floats in the center of the dark room. The space shifts from complete darkness to bright illumination on an irregular cycle, while the meditative sound of distant cars on a highway is synchronized with the ebb and flow of the lighting effects. A brightly lit bare room with an overflowing sink can be seen in Wet Interior. Water flows from the sink onto the floor, filling the room with a rippling pool of fresh water and the faint sound of running water. It's a slightly disturbing scene, but quite beautiful and refreshing to look at. Another installation shows a dramatically lit modernist house with a pile of sand and two parked cars. This strangely moving tableau, suggestively titled The Palace at 4 a.m., is based on Shetabi's memories of Iran, where he lived with his parents when he was a child.

The exhibition also includes five oil-on-canvas paintings, all from 2003 and painted in monochrome gray tones, which are more modest in scope. Here Shetabi isolates a single object from the ordinary world and examines it -- almost wearily, it seems. In one a radiator wavers slightly out of kilter, with a strangely soft and transparent center. In another a mattress, folded and bound with two pieces of string, lies on a slightly curving ground and is lit from above with a soft pearly light. In 92 Voyager, the artist challenges himself with an ordinary and truly tasteless subject. The bulky Voyager is parked in a deserted lot, and crisp angular planes make up the body, but it has tires like squishy doughnuts. The surroundings are hazy and the vehicle is lit with a divine silvery glow. In this painting, and in much of the other work in the show, Shetabi seems to have gathered a chunk of the impersonal modern world, infused it with an unwarranted grace and frozen it in time.

The three-dimensional space of a Japanese dry garden, with its carefully arranged rocks and flowing patterns of raked gravel, is not meant to be entered, but contemplated from a point on its perimeter. Similarly meditative, Mark Shetabi's quiet tableaux and modest paintings have a way of emphasizing the present.

Mark Shetabi: The Palace at 4 a.m.

Through May 31, Locks Gallery, 600 Washington Sq. South, 215-629-1000