It is rare for a show of small works not to feel diminutive. Misfits, Todd Bura's second solo outing at Triple Base Gallery, manages this with style. Triple Base's small space helps the modest sized work shine, but the lion's share of credit must go to Bura's pieces and their disparately cohesive installation in the space.

Installation view

Due to his delicate mark making, muted tones, and softened forms, the work could be described as "slight", but there is meat beneath its subtle surface. The language of Bura's gentle approach is indebted to minimalism, but blends in a povera aesthetic whose modesty keeps the work firmly rooted in the business of day-to-day revelation. The pieces employ a range of techniques and motifs, from nearly invisible pinholes and swirling masses, to angular wooden volumes and dense graphic forms. There are a number of works that could be described as "pictures" and some that might gain the tag "sculpture," but since all the works operate as both physical objects and visual conduits for the meaning flowing amongst them, such designations are nearly meaningless. While I have favorite works, the shows disparate cohesiveness is what I find most intriguing. The diverse objects in the show function concretely as a single work. This Gesamtkunstwerk encompasses not only the objects and the void space of the gallery, but the idiosyncratic details of the rooms architecture.


Untitled (LOS) and Untitled (USEE)

Bura's variously sized "pictures" hang about the gallery at generally standard spacing and height. However, each of the twelve works employs a slightly different center-height, creating a gently undulating wave of energy that softly pulses from piece to piece. No two works in this show are the same size, and this scalar variation is further modulated by Bura's orchestration of each works medium, ground, density, and presentation (framing etc.). A more overtly radical move is Bura's extension of his hung line of works past the normally accepted boundary of the gallery wall. One work hangs on a section of wall poking into the gallery's front bay windows, another, a diptych, is partially installed on the frame of the window itself.

Untitled (DWHE) and Untitled (TOG)

Bura's two "sculptures" are tucked unobtrusively into the back corners of the gallery; one hung unconventionally low, the other resting on the floor. Each is constructed of angular sections of wood that mirror the frames used in the show. Their forms reflect the joined logic of framing but have shaped themselves to echo the architecture of their environment. One is comprised of three rectangular arms, the longest filling the seam where two walls meet, and the other two, jutting perpendicular and flush along each extending wall. It floats a short distance above the floor, mirroring the intersecting seams of the white walls and wooden floor some foot or so below it. The other's two white arms meet at a similar right angle to the corner of the room in which it sits. Its shifted orientation to the intersecting walls triggers a cascade of 45 and 90-degree relationships. The forms of these sculptures are not only in sync with the architecture and the framing of other works, but are also echoed within the worked surfaces of the paintings that surround them. This total unity produces an expanded consideration that brings previously innocuous elements into play; electrical outlets, switches, doors, windows, baseboards, and bulwarks all become part of a shifting set of relationships. What is genuinely surprising is the level to which this succeeds. The architecture plays along so well that one may begin to question if the art has been orchestrated to the architecture or the architecture to the art.

Untitled (YTHI) and Untitled (NGYO)

As much as I appreciate the way that Bura's show at Triple Base manages to bring forward a present and curiously considered awareness of space, place, and our position within it, part of me wishes that, having gotten this far, it would go just a little further, or at least provide something more substantial to grab onto. I really like Todd's work but it often seems to slip away graying out into a barely audible texture glimpsed only in peripheral vision. I can't quite put my finger on what it is that keeps me slightly unsure of this work, but it is there. I usually shake my doubts off but I can never quite forget them. In part it may be the work's delicacy and precious scale which makes them prettier than I am generally comfortable with. While the works elusive quality is a little frustrating, I have to admit that there is something poetic and honest about it quietly slipping off stage to let us make meaning on our own.

Misfits will be on view at Triple Base Gallery through May 4, 2008.
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