Art: Artworks' meaning obscured by introductory verbiage

Contemporary art, being untested by the passage of time, frequently comes to us wrapped in a blanket of philosophical cant, which is supposed to compensate for a lack of historical perspective.

This practice usually is no more than annoying, or sometimes amusing, but occasionally these meticulously drafted rationales become pernicious when they impede one's ability to engage with the art in its natural state.

Probably by coincidence, the fall-winter offerings at the Institute of Contemporary Art provide, in two cases, pointed examples of such obfuscation. Only in the smallest of the three exhibitions, an homage to the late Philadelphia sculptor Bill Walton, can a visitor make an unimpeded connection to the material on view.

The exercise begins in the large ground-floor gallery, with a collection of paintings and drawings by German-born New York painter Charline von Heyl, who participated in a 2006 ICA show of work by artists from Cologne.

Von Heyl, who has lived in New York for 15 years, is an abstract painter. Her 18 large canvases - some in acrylic, some in oil, and some combining both - clearly identify her, with one exception that I can recall, as an abstractionist who avoids manipulations of identifiable reality.

If we discount the frequent use of motifs such as grids, diamonds, stripes, and similar common patterns, her "subjects" coalesce out of her imagination as she works. With each work, she seeks to create, in her words, a "new image that stands for itself as a fact."

The gallery notes and the exhibition catalog, which includes an interview with the artist, make this process sound like a Eureka! moment.

Yet von Heyl's practice goes back to the origins of abstraction itself, to Kandinsky. It came to public attention in this country with "action painting." It has been philosophized to death.

This leaves us with the paintings themselves, and with three multi-panel arrays of mixed-media, black-and-white drawings. These, fortunately, are sufficient to provide a satisfying experience, because von Heyl is an accomplished painter capable of producing a variety of expression from minimal means.

The paintings cover the last decade, but they do not describe a smooth, logical arc of progression. Von Heyl combines a number of familiar tactics such as dripping, color-field washiness, spatial ambiguity, hard-edged shapes with intense but unpredictable color. She can alternate between vibrant yellow and earthy brown effortlessly, as the mood strikes her.

It's fair to say that the essence of her execution is unpredictability, combined with changing her mind; one painting rarely telegraphs what one will find around the corner.

The contrasts can be startling; for instance, on one side of the gallery, the boldly spiked tooth shape titled, simply, P, is opposed on the other side by the misty, drippy, colored veils of Check My Bucket.

If von Heyl's work is in any way distinctive, it's because of its mutability - for her willingness to erase, reconstruct, rethink - not for any signature style.

In a large group exhibition, her work wouldn't proclaim individuality; it's essentially an affirmation of classic modernist thinking. Yet its consistent intelligence, energy, and pleasing compositional harmonies give it strong appeal.

On the second floor, philosophical web-spinning becomes so abstruse, not to mention obtuse, that the art is smothered by it. The problem is announced by the exhibition title, "Blowing on a Hairy Shoulder / Grief Hunters."

I haven't the slightest idea what that's supposed to mean, just as I'm equally baffled by how it connects to the art on view and to the miasma of accompanying verbiage.

The show features 20 Israeli artists chosen by another Israeli, artist and curator Doron Rabina. It purports to examine the concept of orginality, the distinction between the root of an artistic idea and how an artist might modify, personalize, or otherwise produce something that could be considered to be "original."

In pursuit of enlightenment, we're dragged into a philosophical thicket in which we find ourselves engaged with Wittgenstein and Kant, among other worthies. (This courtesy of a ponderous essay by Nimrod Matan of Tel Aviv University and Hamidrasha School of Art. Read it at your peril.)

The works on offer don't seem to connect with the ostensible theme in any obvious way. This is probably because Rabina's marriage of art and esthetic philosophy is an artifical construct.

A more plausible theme would appear to be human origins. The most engaging work is a surreal video by Gilad Ratman that suggests primitive humans arising from primeval mud. In another captivating, if puzzling, video by Oliver Husain, two "Franciscan monks" use hand mirrors to mesmerize a preening peacock.

"Hairy Shoulder" has too few such moments because its intellectual reach is far too ambitious. Expecting young artists to match wits with Wittgenstein is beyond plausibility.

After this heavy dose of atomized esthetics, the re-creation of Bill Walton's studio space in the adjacent Project Room comes as meditative relief.

Walton, who taught at Moore College of Art and Design, was widely known and respected in the local art community. He died last year.

As a tribute, ICA senior curator Ingrid Schaffner has re-created his small studio space in the building at 915 Spring Garden St. It isn't an exact replica, but its meticulous order and intense spirit of engagement with objects is true to life.

Only half the replica "studio" is working space, fitted out with power tools, materials, an overhead loft, and even a mock structural pillar in the center. The other half is a tiny exhibition area, where Walton would hang works in progress.

The installation includes representative samples - a cluster of paintbrushes, two small cloths, like pendants, hanging from pegs; a block of wood wedged open with a slice of aluminum.

Walton has been called a minimalist, but I think intimist is more accurate. He was an artist who could detect the universe in a grain of sand, or a tree branch, or the conjunction of a piece of glass, a stick, and a C-clamp.

Bill Walton's Studio is an evocative and even moving retrospective portrait of an exemplary artist and a material affirmation that, for Walton, art was life, and vice versa.

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