StreetSignism

Another project that encompasses many of these oddball extremes into one messy parcel involves a romance between a video professor and a sycamore tree. For the last year or so, Joel Tauber has been keeping a record of his infatuation with — and actions on behalf of — a single undernourished Platanus racemosa in the Rose Bowl parking lot. Teetering on (and often careening over) the brink of foolishness, Tauber’s obsessive, absurdist reduction of think-global-act-local has nonetheless progressed from the vigilante civic pranksterism of installing guardrailing to prevent car-bashing to the point where the city of Pasadena, Rose Bowl officials and numerous art-world institutions have joined in to correct the imbalance between nature and culture — at least in the 400 square feet surrounding the lonesome sycamore.

While Tauber’s postmodern multimedia translation of A Charlie Brown Christmas also incorporates the decoration of the tree with giant earrings (in emulation of the ancient Persian monarch Xerxes, no less) and a tree-shaped multichannel video installation scheduled for Susanne Vielmetter’s in the spring, it is the steadfast, visionary stewardship of his initially solitary creative engagement with the tree — and the story of how it blossomed and flourished — that gives the project its metaphorical political wallop. It’s the art and politics of the alienated and funny, earnest and mystified individual, who cries, “I may not know art, but I know what I want and I know how to get it.”

STREET SIGNS AND SOLAR OVENS: Socialcraft in Los Angeles | Craft and Folk Art Museum, 5814 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. | Through December 31 | (323) 937-4230

APOCALYPSO FACTO: New Works by Robbie Conal | Track 16, 2525 Bergamot Station, Santa Monica | Through November 18 | (310) 264-4678

POST-POSTCARD 2006 | Outpost for Contemporary Art, 6375 N. Figueroa St., Highland Park | December 8–10 | (323) 982-9461

BEYOND GREEN: Toward a Sustainable Art | University Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach | Through December 17 | (562) 985-5761

ANSEL ADAMS AT MANZANAR | Japanese American National Museum, 369 E. First St., Los Angeles | Through February 18 | (213) 625-0414

TOO MUCH FREEDOM?: Freewaves’ 10th Biennial Festival of Film, Video and Experimental New Media | Various venues | Through November and December | www.freewaves.org

JOEL TAUBER: Sick-Amour | www.joeltauber.com