THE Magazine - Los Angeles

The woodwork and utilitarian objects of Kyoto-born Michael Wilson and the ceramic sculptural objects of Persian-Brit Yassi Mazandi seem right at home in Los Angeles, whose casual sophistication and quirkily naturalistic, Eastern-inflected local vernacular matches their modern takes on traditional design forms. Michael Wilson's wood furniture has a slightly retro flair, a taste for the balanced asymmetry of three-legged seats and table bases, and a sense of humor (as in the creepy and sexy ebonized maple low table called Tarantula). But Wilson's enduring appeal lies in the windswept poetry of his natural-wood objects, one-of-a-kind works, functional but sculpturally expressive, conceived around the wood's "flaws" -- knotty clusters, ragged, bark-lined crusts, baroque wood-grain variegations, tumescent contours.

Mazandi's ancient Modernism fulfills the traditional metaphoric relationship between clay and flesh, between the forms of vessels and the human body. Using mostly natural colors and abstract references to the natural world, his scored platters, flirty wall pieces (especially the fanciful 18-piece installation Mrs. Birch's flower bed), and communal vessels reveal a hand-wrought, process-oriented approach to clay that privileges its surface texture, letting the objects' gently rounded contours and explosions of detail speak for themselves.

Intermingled at close proximity, the two artist-craftsmen's work generated a perfect mutual foil, supporting an overall motif of paradox and fusion while maintaining a lively discourse between objects and idioms. This infused the array of chairs, tables, coat racks, platters, and vessels with the life of a bustling city plaza. The multi-sensory appeal of the opening night of the raw, expansive Chen showcase supported this energy with sets from Mia Doi Todd & Dwight Trible, Build an Ark, and DJ Carlos Nino -- all musicians who share Wilson's and Mazandi's multivalent creative approach. But even beyond the rich territory of cultural cross-pollination, the truly compelling aspect of the installation lay in all the participants' interest in the evolution of the interrelationships between nature and design, material and form, craft and spirit, functionality and the ages-old mythologies of clay and wood.