There seems to be a dichotomous relationship between idea and actualization in art. Often one precludes the other, rendering a work either all style or all concept. The dual exhibit at the Contemporary Art Museum seems to fall prey, for the most part, to this clash of art’s conceptual titans. The museum’s newest exhibit displays the works of Gedi Sibony and Bruce Nauman. While there are some important and thought provoking works of art to be seen, the rest is largely forgettable.

Upon entering the main gallery space, one first encounters Bruce Nauman’s exhibit entitled “Dead Shot Dan.” Borrowing its title from a Buster Keaton movie, this show aims to reveal the whimsical, and at times, sardonic humor within art.

Nauman is an artist who has garnered considerable fame for his use of varied media. As such, he became one of the most influential artists in defining American contemporary art in the ’80s.

The show displays some of Nauman’s most famous pieces, namely Double Poke in the Eye II and his Self-Portrait as a Fountain. In true Three Stooges-fashion, Nauman manipulated neon tubing to depict two faces poking each other in the eye. This mildly graphic work attempts to show the absurdity in violence, as do many of the pieces in the exhibit. Nauman’s Self-Portrait as a Fountain is a photograph of the artist spitting water into the air in imitation of a fountain. Nauman imbues his work with the instantly recognizable element of humor.

His works are intentionally capricious. They have a clear intention and are realized through many different and visually stimulating means.

The realm of the forgettable falls mostly on the side of Gedi Sibony’s exhibition, entitled “My Arms are Tied Behind My Other Arms.” Sibony is a young New York-based artist whose works seem to be all concept, no substance. This is his first solo museum exhibition.

With materials like carpet remnants, cardboard and metal pipes, Sibony achieves what is described by the museum to be, “a nonchalant awkwardness, a proud nudity and an overall implausibility that bring together space, weight and materiality . . .”

By sprawling tented pieces of carpet on the ground and draping a door with a piece of paper as in his installation entitled Partly Me Manners, Sibony is praising the beauty of the bare essential.

Certainly in today’s artistic climate, to exalt the mundane is an admirable goal and common, to say the least.

But meticulously manipulating a medium so that it appears nonchalant seems to defeat the purpose of easy spontaneity.

The exhibition is a contrived construct. It survives purely in theory and assumes that few are concerned with the literal.

Sibony’s art comes off as unwaveringly self-assured and pretentious and, even to the most open-minded of observers, it is so obscure as to be intimidating, especially when viewed in a gallery setting.

Gedi Sibony’s “My Arms Are Tied Behind My Other Arms” and Bruce Nauman’s “Dead Shot Dan” run from Jan. 23-April 19, 2009.

The Contemporary Art Museum, located at 3750 Washington Blvd. For more information about the current exhibits, visit www.camstl.org.