Siah Armajani at Weinstein

Siah Armajani is widely known in the community where he lives. A pedestrian bridge he designed spans the roadway next to the Walker Art Center, and there are other important works--a skyway, a garden, a covered walkway--in the Twin Cities, where Armajani, Iranian by birth, came to attend college in 1960 and has remained ever since. But this excellent presentation, way beyond "long overdue," was Armajani's first solo gallery show in the area. The exhibition featured three of his signature architectural-sculptural constructions, along with a nice local touch, a cycle of drawings showing the Mississippi River in each of the four seasons.

Thirty years ago Armajani included a tiny model of a dormer with an open window in his "Dictionary for Building" series. The charm of that early effort is gone in the new large-scale version, Dormer (2004), a steel-and-glass construction that offers visual openness leading to social and psychological darkness: the metal cot, rolled-up mattress and pillow that are visible inside suggest imprisonment, with viewing transformed into surveillance. At best the cramped garret might be a second-class room for a boarder or servant.

In Dormer, a model of an old-fashioned structure (possibly a grain elevator) rests at the head of the bed, as if to embody a dream of a less disturbing world. Similarly, One Car Garage (2004) includes an antique toy truck and small models of a concrete grain elevator and an old-style commercial building, marking the distance between the populism and love of vernacular that informed Armajani's earlier art and the chill at the heart of these recent creations. With its doors covered by bars, the garage seems less a relic of the days before McMansions and multicar garages (which the title implies) than a symbol of post-9/11 Fortress America. It harbors an empty chair, an image of absence and isolation.

A third construction, the glass-and-metal Fireplace (2000), also examines a single architectural unit. In comparison with the other two works it seems neutral, a formal and conceptual exercise that comes close to suggesting a postmodern take on moderne elegance. The maquette for this work, however, provides a reminder of Armajani's humor, with a pencil serving as the flue.

The drawings combine the Middle West and the Middle East, the mighty Mississippi and a jeweled mosaic style that recalls Persian miniatures. As in Johns, the seasons are a vehicle for virtuosity and meditative reflection. Blending lyricism and playfulness, with laundry blowing on the line in one and a scarecrow and (unfazed) crows in another, the drawings were the perfect complement to the disquieting character of the two major new works.

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COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning