Art: Two philosophers go for a walk . . .

Joshua Mosley's installation at the Institute of Contemporary Art is the tiniest visual tip of an enormous teleological iceberg: the nature of existence, and particularly the possible role of a divinity in human affairs.

The installation, titled "dread," is spare and elegant, and consists of two parts. In one room, Mosley has placed five small bronze sculptures - two male figures, a cow, a dog, and a large carnivorous beetle (

Anthia sexguttata

).

The three animals, which aren't in scale to each other or the humans, can be seen to represent the natural order, both domestic and wild. The dog, as we will see, straddles this divide.

The humans are influential philosophers, Blaise Pascal from the 17th century and Jean-Jacques Rousseau from the 18th. They're the protagonists of a six-minute, high-definition video by Mosley that plays continuously on a theater-size screen in an adjoining room.

Through computer animation, the roughly modeled clay maquettes for the five bronzes appear in the video. The setting for the brief narrative is a forest leading to a clearing, where the film's violent denouement takes place.

The film is called "dread" after a dog in one of Eadweard Muybridge's landmark animal-locomotion films, made in the late 19th century. Mosley is said to have been inspired by these studies, although the thematic connection is hard to discern.

The film can be summarized in two sentences. Pascal (he's the one with the longer hair) and Rousseau take a walk in the woods and philosophize, epigrammatically, about nature, God and existence. They encounter the huge mastiff, which attacks Rousseau and presumably rearranges his body parts.

The graphic quality of the black-and-white film is razor-sharp; that alone is sufficient to hold one's interest. But to make even minimal sense of it, one needs to know something about Rousseau and his natural philosophy, and also about Pascal, who also was an important mathemetician and scientist.

One of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, Rousseau believed in the natural goodness of man, which, in his view, had become corrupted by the development of urban, "civilized" society. For Rousseau, nature should be the model for the cultivation of virtue and morality.

Pascal viewed human existence as the consequence of paradoxical dualities, such as faith and reason and, ultimately, life and death. These dualities suggested to him that there were few absolute truths by which humans can order their lives.

Mosley's film compresses and juxtaposes these two conceptions of existence. All goes well until the philosophers encounter the dog, which violently disabuses Rousseau of his faith in the purity and goodness of nature. Pascal can only look on in silent horror.

After seeing this powerful graphic allegory, one might wonder what purpose the bronze sculptures serve. They anchor the characters in the present, and, being bronze, they impart to the production classical dignity and gravity. One can go back and forth between the sculptures and the film, measuring one against the other, the better to appreciate how many imponderables of existence have been packed into a simple tale of two men and a dog.

Back to the future.

Sherman and Mr. Peabody must have reactivated the "wayback machine." How else to explain "Dirt on Delight: Impulses That Form Clay," which occupies the largest ICA gallery?

Finding a ceramics exhibition at the ICA is inherently disorienting. Instead of art on the edge, we have Stone Age technology and displays of skill-based craftsmanship.

That's not all that makes "Dirt" such an odd show. There's the feeling that the ICA has accidentally discovered ceramic art a generation or two after it entered the contemporary art mainstream.

It's difficult to figure out, either from the installation or from the supporting expository material, just what "Dirt" is supposed to be about.

It doesn't offer any revelations or insights, in terms of either form or philosophy. Some of the curatorial statements sound either blindingly obvious or foolish. For instance: "All of the works in the exhibition appear to be in some state of flux or growth." Not only is this not true, but after seeing the show one might more readily reach the opposite conclusion.

I suppose the ICA should be applauded for finally recognizing that ceramics can be high art (function is excluded here - no cups, plates, bowls or vases).

But when we strip away the tendentious verbiage used to create a rationale, what we're left with is a generalized survey of recent ceramic art, mostly American, that begins all the way back with Peter Voulkos, who helped to establish (or rather, re-establish) clay as a medium for aesthetic expression.

Except for the youngest generation, this is a show of canonical reputations, from Voulkos, Beatrice Wood and Rudolf Staffel to Betty Woodman, Ron Nagle, Ken Price, Adrian Saxe, Viola Frey and Robert Arneson. George Ohr provides a historical-visionary anchor and Eugene von Bruenchenhein represents untutored folk artists.

The 22 artists were chosen to "cross a spectrum of conventional delineations among fine art, craft and outsider practices." What they do in fact is delineate a trend in recent work toward artlessness, typified by the funky fluorescent red pots of Beverly Semmes and Sterling Ruby's agonized pedestal sculptures.

Deliberate crudity isn't new; Ohr and Voulkos both baffled and outraged traditionalists decades ago with their twisted, pierced and fractured vessels. In this show, Ohr's ideas have been revivified by Kathy Butterly.

If you ignore the curatorial thesis, you can have fun with this show. Price's sculpture

Zyko,

which looks like a conglomeration of fat sausages, boasts an exquisite painted surface. Saxe's

Hi-Fibre Gyno-Monocle Magic Lamp

is a masterly synthesis of formal balance, delicacy and symbolism. Ann Agee's large tabletop array of white porcelain figures is the most ambitious and enchanting work on view.

Clay does indeed offer artists possessed of the requisite technical skill, patience and imagination almost limitless creative options. "Dirt" makes that point many times over - not that, after all these years, it needs to be regurgitated.

"Joshua Mosley: dread" continues at the Institute of Contemporary Art, 36th and Sansom Streets, through March 29. "Dirt on Delight" continues through June 21. Hours are noon to 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Free admission. Information 215-898-7108 or

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