The art is a lonely hunter

Sam Davis and Jeff Fulmer would seem to have a lot in common. They both use nontraditional materials and cut-out shapes with an almost mechanical precision, but their concerns and obsessions have led to vastly different results.

Davis’ last show in Las Vegas included paintings, sculptures and photographs, as does this one, and they both feature Davis’s alter-ego, “Astrobot,” a red robot/astronaut hybrid that is the subject of much of his art.

Astrobot is the only one of his kind on the planet, and as if the inept little fellow needed a reminder of how alone he really is, in seeking a mate he has ventured into the dating game. In the small oil on wood “The Reality of Robot Dating,” Astrobot is the lone figure on a rigid horizon line that divides the sky and land into two equally empty spaces. “Between Here and There Lies a Desert” is a sadly humorous depiction of unreciprocated love—Astrobot is pictured leaning toward a cactus, one arm of which is a pink ghost-like creature trying to camouflage herself. Even more poignant is “And for a Moment, Thoughts of Going Home,” in which during the black of night Astrobot mistakes the glow from a streetlight for the beam of the mothership coming to take him home.

In “I Thought This Was Where I Left My Pod,” the robot, arms at his side, stands forlornly alone amid the arid landscape where everything else comes in pairs—two cacti, two mountains and two clouds.

Davis’ show also features “model kits” made of Plexiglas and balsa wood. The component parts are simple shapes, like a child’s template. One of them, “Astrobot Playset,” is composed of the same shapes seen in “I Thought This Was Where I Left My Pod.”

Creating items by hand that look mass-produced seems a curious choice for an artist, but I think I understand what motivates Davis. Being an artist is lonely. You spend hours by yourself in your studio, and typically your only contact with your viewing public is at an opening reception. If the work weren’t satisfying, we wouldn’t do it, but some artists need more of a connection to people. I suspect Davis is one of those artists, and imagining people tracing the shapes that he fabricated probably gives him an added satisfaction.

Where Davis wants to connect to people, Jeff Fulmer wants to reexamine our relationship to other organisms and the environment. Starting with the title, fauna, Fulmer confounds the idea of categorization, because his sculptures depict flowering plants (flora, not fauna), and not just any flowering plants, but carnivorous species and ones that have prickly stems and leaves that “fight back.” Made of aluminum or steel, their precisely cut, larger-than-life forms often trail along the sides of blocks and extend along the floor.

In one large work, “Arizona Thistle,” there are cropped metallic tendrils that give the illusion of having cut into the floor as well as tentacles at eye level that can be downright dangerous. (One viewer told me, “It almost poked my eye out.”) Its base is covered with a textured wallpaper that mimics an old tin ceiling with its pattern of squares that contain foliate designs. The curving organic forms in “Aster” are disturbingly echoed in the tombstone-shaped slab that serves as its base. Except for “Trumpet Pitcher,” which stands on its own, all the pieces sit on rectilinear wood bases, too decorous for the unruly plants. The effect is jarring. The parts seem cobbled together, but I think that’s the point: We have an uneasy relationship with our environment.

These works have a strange beauty. Davis has invented an otherworldly avatar to illustrate our existential dilemma—the feeling of being alone in the universe, the need to connect to someone or something beyond our ourselves. Fulmer’s art, likewise, jams together natural forms sculpted in tough materials, illustrating their underlying similarity.

For the Love of Pod

Sam Davis

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Through May 30

Trifecta Gallery

103 E. Charleston #108

366-7001

martywalshgallery.com

fauna

Jeff Fulmer

455-7030