by Garrison Frost

Years ago, the Joslyn Fine Arts Gallery was typical of what happened when a city decided to try its hand at arts exhibition without making much in the way of an institutional commitment. The main exhibition room looked very much like a converted cafeteria, right down to the linoleum floors. The lack of much in the way of useful wall space resulted in the use of inexpensive pegboard displays. Moreover, the inconsistent exhibitions showed that there wasn?t a consistently strong hand guiding the gallery in one direction or another. All of this kept the gallery far off the map of legitimate Los Angeles art venues.

But it's not called the Joslyn Fine Arts Gallery anymore. Following a renovation that lasted several years, the facility reopened in October as the Torrance Art Museum. In addition to some of the finest exhibition spaces for miles, the new gallery also is boasting an impressive commitment to fine arts exhibition, one that is very much on display in the new facility's inaugural show. Aside from some aesthetic work, the exterior of the building – part of the city of Torrance's large cultural arts center – hasn't changed all that much. What used to be the main gallery of the Joslyn Fine Arts Gallery has been converted into a foyer for the new facility. From this foyer, the primary exhibition space has been carved out to the right. It's a good space, large but not too large, easily divided by portable walls. I particularly like the skylights that bring in natural light without slicing the room into patches of light and dark. The smaller exhibition space is sort of tucked in behind the reception desk, and it allows for a tighter focus on a particular artist or small collection. This is a great set-up for the museum in that it allows more than one thing to happen at a time – something the old facility just couldn't do. It's my understanding that the facility will open another gallery in the future.

The city of Torrance is making several big leaps with this new facility, not the least of which has to do with expectations. Galleries run by small and medium municipalities sometimes are successful at bringing in quality work, but they are also known to make compromises to suit the needs of local politics, local sensibilities and boosterism. So a lot was hanging on the Torrance Art Museum's first show. Where was this bar going to be set? In that regard, the selection of De Wain Valentine and Nancy Braver for the inaugural show was just about perfect.

Valentine is one of the lions of Los Angeles modern art, arising from Venice in the time of other giants such as Charles Arnoldi, Larry Bell, Vija Celmins, Robert Graham, Robert Irwin, Ed Moses, Ed Ruscha and others. In this show, he's trying to get thinking about skies and horizons with large acrylic works that only imply both in the abstract. I really like that curator Kristina Newhouse chose to include these pieces in the show. There's no shortage of ocean art in the South Bay. We've all seen the pictures of the Manhattan Beach pier or of waves crashing under the horizon or the cliffs of Palos Verdes climbing out of rough seas. It's entirely possible that the typical South Bay art enthusiasts were fairly convinced that there wasn't a way to handle this subject matter in a way they hadn't seen before. But these works by Valentine clearly toss that notion out the window.

The exhibition space is dominated by two large pieces, "Nighttime Passage 120" and "Nighttime Passage 119," the latter of which appealed to me a bit more because of the hint of blue below the resin horizon line that the artist has affixed to each of his pieces in this show. While the bulk of each piece is rendered in a murky black and white, the hint of reflective color adds a certain charter to "119" that "120" doesn't have. Color is more prominent, as one would think, in "Blue Illuminated Skyline" and "Purple Illuminated Skyline," and these pieces are particularly powerful.

I wasn't as enthusiastic about the "skyline" pieces that departed further from reality than the others. These were set into a room of their own and in some cases placed the horizon line vertically, or surrounded by large patches of color. I think I understand what Valentine is up to here – taking the abstract visual elements he has established in the other pieces and removing their context to make them function in a new way. But I'm just not willing to go there with him on that.

Nancy Braver's dramatic works using plastic and light are wildly successful, simple in their fascinating effect on the viewer and yet obviously very complex in their making. Dominating the small room are Braver's four columns fashioned from layers of plastic arranged with the aid of computers into sweeping gestures of color – blues, pinks and yellows. Great stuff.

As mentioned earlier, this first show was important for the museum in that it establishes what is possible from here on. Newhouse's choices are such that one feels the Torrance Art Museum can do almost anything it wants from here on in.

(Nov. 3, 2005)

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