Once upon a time, in a far-flung suburban hamlet of Los Angeles, it came to pass that an inordinate amount of the most radical art in the world took shape on the otherwise socially conservative campus of Pomona College. The stars first aligned in 1969, when Hal Glicksman became curator of the college’s museum, instituting an experimental studio-residency program dubbed the Artist’s Gallery for the duration of his yearlong term. The stars reconfigured and aligned anew as Helene Winer (of subsequent Artists Space and Metro Pictures renown) took over the post and held it until 1972, presciently

Polly Apfelbaum’s “Feelies”—an ongoing series of small, unfired polymer-clay sculptures that the artist began during her Yaddo residency in 2010—point to a handful of cultural references, namely the midcentury abstractions of painter Paul Feeley, the “feelie” vessels created by potter Rose Cabat, and the proto–indie rock of the Feelies. The title of this show, “Double Nickels on the Dime,” was also referential, having been taken from an album by West Coast hardcore band Minutemen that, in turn riffs on a song by former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar. Such layers of knowledge could be

Like a good tagline, the final phrase of the wriggling, poetic manifesto accompanying “BLEU,” the latest exhibition by JEQU (curator Howie Chen and artist/attorney Jason Kakoyiannis), cut earnestness with cool illegibility: “It’s about a feeling,” they wrote—and yet, the mundane components of the show amounted to nothing if not an airy intellectual impression. The installation BLEU, 2011, consisted of three “sensorial arrangements” corresponding to the top, middle, and base notes of the men’s fragrance Bleu de Chanel, displayed in sequence for six days each. The cologne had been resynthesized