Julian Hoeber
To depict one’s own consciousness may be a tall order, but that’s the long-standing mission of this Los Angeles artist. It takes enthralling if, at times, high-handed form here in a series of sculptural models of fantasy architecture and trompe-l’oeil paintings of vision boards. One of the latter, titled “4,000 Years of Trying to Figure Out the Shape of the Mind,” includes references to René Descartes, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and the phrenologist L. A. Vaught. “The Appearance of Geometry in Nature as a Root of Technology” charts the history of grids, from the kindergarten blocks designed by Friedrich Fröbel to the Microsoft logo. Hoeber’s navel-gazing takes on a Borgesian melancholy in the sculptures, particularly “Permeable Tension Figure Model,” in which a spiralling white tube punctured with holes (part coral, part spinal column) accompanies a coal-black bust of the artist, complete with glass eyes, resting cheek-side down, as if daydreaming.