Out of the ordinary

Twentieth century art pretty much dispensed with the idea that its job was to give viewers access to the infinite, or even a glimpse of it. That had been one of art's functions for millenniums as is evident in the pyramids, altarpieces and paintings various cultures have made throughout the ages. But Modern art generally has opposed such grandiose ambitions, stripping away the suffocating cliches that often accompany them and focusing instead on art's place in everyday life -- among mundane, not sublime, subjects.

At the Museum of Contemporary Art, a refreshingly unpretentious exhibition suggests that all this is beginning to change. The 19 pieces the eight artists in "Poetics of the Handmade" made from 2000 through 2007 combine the down-to-earth impetus of much 20th century art with a renewed interest in something more than the quotidian. Call it pedestrian transcendence. Or the do-it-yourself sublime.

Organized by curator Alma Ruiz, "Poetics of the Handmade" makes a place for meaningful experiences of mind-blowing vastness amid the limitless cascade of disposable items churned out by post-industrial societies all over the globe. Its artists transform such incidental objects as toothpicks, cotton swabs, cocktail napkins, aluminum foil, stacks of paper, tubes of lipstick and wads of currency into provocative pieces that are as accessible as ordinary household conveniences and as loaded with significance as much pre-Modern art.

Works by three of the artists encapsulate the best features of the show. In the first gallery, Magdalena Atria has suspended an irregular orb, with a 5-foot diameter, from the ceiling. Made of thousands of toothpicks stuck into little balls of flesh-toned modeling clay, the abstract sculpture, "Smiling desperately I" is an idiosyncratic lattice of equilateral triangles. Light permeates its outer regions. But its core is so dense that you cannot see through it. Think Buckminster Fuller meets homemade meteorite via low-budget kid's toy.

The Chilean artist's labor-intensive sculpture makes a great first impression. But its effect wears thin. That's because Atria's piece recalls the scaled-down Eiffel Towers and White Houses obsessive hobbyists regularly craft from toothpicks. It comes off as a life-size rendition of a conventional Minimalist sculpture, a recycled work of art about art that behaves too much like a well-mannered parlor game.