Not satisfied with the visionary and the genius, the ’70s art world began marketing a new line of action hero, a kind of AWOL. G.I. Joe who staged reckless experiments using improper materials (polyurethane, loaded guns, raw meat) and whose antics were greeted by much horror and excitement. Critics outfitted this basement scientist with a beret and some structuralist vocabulary and announced the discovery of the bricoleur. Today, with a bookish art scene eager to prove it’s still crazy after all these years (or perhaps imports from France have gone beyond theory to love of Jerry Lewis?), that

There are several independent painters working in L.A. who do strange things and don’t give a rat’s ass about the worldwide hit parade. Or if they do, the parade never went around their block and they learned to live without it. This isn’t to say that these painter are unambitious, it’s just that they have better things to do than look over their shoulders for applause and cuddles, winking knowingly at last year’s model and throwing fits about their new-and-improvedness. They’re more into freaky problems in the studio, the weirdness of making marks, colors and surfaces, the intoxicating language

Karen Finley’s exhibition “St. Kilda” presented an assortment of works that dealt with bereavement and the regressive, helpless condition it can reduce us to. In Written in Sand, 1992–94, a memorial installation first shown at HallWalls in Buffalo, ten tons of damp sand were deposited in a dim, gilded room, and the sand hillocks that formed were topped with flickering white votive candles. A handwritten text on the wall invited you to “write the names of those you have loved and lost” in the sand and then to smooth them away.

The main gallery contained nine framed pieces that resembled giant