A Mind at Work in Chiseled Features

Artists, like other people who do manual work, often say that they like to keep their hands busy so that their minds are free to do other things. At Regen Projects, a wonderful group of carved wooden figures and reliefs by German sculptor Stephan Balkenhol embodies this complex experience of hands-on distraction.

When your attention is absorbed by the immediate physical activity in which your body is engaged, it’s impossible for others to know just what you’re thinking. Even more astonishing is that when most people get caught up in the task at hand, they have a very hard time describing what happens to their minds. For fairly long periods of time, human consciousness loses track of itself--and sometimes seems to disappear altogether--without one’s performance being in any way compromised.

Balkenhol’s fascinating sculptures invite viewers to bear witness to a similar phenomenon. Swiftly chiseled from large chunks of wood, without the benefit of models, photos or preliminary drawings, these uncanny works evince an artist thoroughly absorbed in the physical demands of his craft.

The surfaces of Balkenhol’s figures are never sanded or smoothly finished. Instead, every square inch reveals myriad cuts and faceted chisel marks formed when Balkenhol chipped away at the wood.

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The speedy spontaneity with which these works were clearly carved complements the casual demeanors of the people they depict. Set on rudimentary pedestals or cut from thick pieces of lumber, these sculptures of ordinary individuals wearing everyday expressions and run-of-the-mill clothing stand, sit and stare as if they’ve got all the time in the world.

Despite the rough, unfinished quality of Balkenhol’s figures, none seem crude or unsophisticated. Each appears to have the capacity to express a wide range of emotions, although at the moment none are moved to do anything more than patiently convey cool nonchalance.

As a result, Balkenhol’s sculptures have the presence of people keeping their hands busy. Not truly self-possessed, they seem more like individuals so fully absorbed in what they’re doing that their minds have drifted off.

As viewers, we do just the opposite: Our minds are kept busy as our hands are left free. Slightly envious of Balkenhol’s intriguing figures, we realize that losing track of one’s mind is both pleasurable and productive.

* Regen Projects, 629 N. Almont Drive, (310) 276-5424, through Jan. 25. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Worlds of Domesticity: Gunter Umberg’s small abstract paintings pack a powerful punch by slipping between the realms of architecture and design. In contrast to much reductive geometric abstraction, which gets saddled with untenable ideas of purity and transcendence, Umberg’s down-to-earth works insist that they be seen--and lived with--in domestic settings.

To that end, the Cologne, Germany-based artist has embedded five sheets of finely sanded plywood into one wall of the foyer at Burnett Miller Gallery. This wood serves as a backdrop for a gorgeous green painting and a compact black one. Its sensuous grain is as familiar as any tacky paneling in middle-American rec rooms, yet so tastefully presented that it wouldn’t be out of place in homes regularly shown off in upscale design magazines.

As for the paintings, it’s much easier to see them against the wood’s organic patterns than against the icy neutrality of the gallery’s white walls. An almost imperceptible hint of blue peeks through the smoothly sanded green panel and accentuates the delicate pattern of crisscrossing brush strokes in the black one.

In the main gallery, an extremely dense layer of black pigment on an aluminum panel pulls your eye toward its powdery surface. The seemingly infinite depths of this color are subtly disorienting; but what’s most puzzling is the way Umberg’s work seems to warp the very architecture of the gallery.

After a while, you realize that no two sides of the approximately three-foot-square monochrome are parallel, and that its edges might form only one right angle--but you can’t be certain. Angling upward toward the gallery’s tall entrance, the painting’s top edge echoes both the shape of the gallery’s interior and the way space gets compressed in this black hole of an image.

Insistently physical, Umberg’s art lays claim to the space our bodies occupy. In this sense, it’s not at all abstract.

* Burnett Miller Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, (310) 315-9961, through Jan. 25. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Calendar Guys: The timing of Blake Little’s exhibition of black-and-white photographs at G. Ray Hawkins Gallery isn’t the only thing that puts one in mind of thematic calendars, so ubiquitous this time of year. Consisting of uniform shots of similar subjects laid out in arch poses, the artist’s slick prints could easily fit into a calendar called “Fabulous Beefcakes Strike Silly Poses” or “Hunks Camping It Up With No Sense of Humor.”

In these 16 photographs made over the past seven years, nude men don metal headgear, stare meaningfully at one another, balance on balls like trained circus animals or flex their muscles while standing on tiptoe. In others, a solitary guy perches on a gnarled tree stump, another hides behind a big leaf, one crouches under a tortoise shell and still another dresses up like a clergyman while exposing himself.

If Little exploited--or even acknowledged--the goofy humor of these formulaic studio setups, his pictures wouldn’t be so pompous. They’d be easier to take if they were less like art and more like calendars.

* G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, 908 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 394-5558, through Jan. 25. Closed Sundays and Mondays.