Double Vision

That's why, with finances more than secured, the Dumbacher "we" decided that it could afford to split in two, to help build a new life around aesthetics. In 1998, John moved to D.C. as senior vice president of licensing for National Geographic, contributing to the art on evenings and weekends and to their joint economy from 9 to 5. That let Joe take to the studio full time in L.A.

He works and lives inside the much-profiled house the brothers built on hilltop land in Pasadena. It sits up above the valley like a ship beached on a mountain. Inside, it's full of open spaces, air and light, with floors in polished wood and poured concrete.

In Washington, John lives a bit more modestly: His studio off Logan Circle is small and below grade, but it's tricked out nearly as gorgeously as the L.A. house.

And he has easy access to a third Dumbacher Bros. property, in New York, intended as the place where they can meet to look at art and make it. Starchitect Richard Gluckman has built them a tiny loft designed to house two people not afraid of sharing space. Like the brothers' other assets, all this real estate belongs to both of them.

Their transcontinental sprawl has helped their art develop. If one point of collaborating is to undo cliches of the big romantic ego, could there be a better way than putting 3,000 miles between the halves of a split personality?

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An ongoing body of work the Dumbachers call their "Pivots," first shown at the Patricia Faure Gallery in Los Angeles, is built around that split. It begins, in either L.A. or D.C., with bizarre, fist-size sculptures cobbled together from plastic foam and tape, then mailed back and forth across the continent so each twin can have a go at them. The aim is to construct a shape that is so messy, edgy and complex, Joe says, that there's no describing it in ordinary geometric terms.

Once that's been achieved -- either brother might declare an object done -- Joe takes the blob to a machine shop in Los Angeles, where it's rendered as a 3-D digital file and then carved into solid metal. The result is a sleek, high-tech echo of the scrappy object that once bounced back and forth across the country. The sculptures themselves may have appeal, but it's their genesis that makes them most intriguing: single, polished artworks born from piles of trash exchanged between two sundered twins.

The brothers don't quite seem to recognize how much their twinness and collaboration, especially now that it's challenged by geography, matters in our readings of their art. They see themselves as very different beings: Where Joe studied marketing and finance, John points out, he followed a very a different track . . . in marketing and management. Though they view their collaboration as central to their art -- "We don't even try to separate it," says John, "it's both of us working through an idea, then moving on to the next one" -- they don't bill it as that much more than a convenience. "The work is simply better because we're both working on it."

They also cite the convenience of being able to have one partner making money in marketing -- the National Geographic brand has flourished under John -- and another managing their art career. Ironically, their allegiance to the market in the world outside of art has freed them from the tyranny of the art market: "It's allowed us to do what we've wanted to do," says John, "as opposed to being solely dependent on a collector dictating your next move and having to create art for the marketplace."

Dealer Sarah Finlay launched Washington's Fusebox gallery with a show of the Dumbachers' work. She, too, cites the practical side of their collaboration -- how they have twice the time to work on every piece, as well as the benefit "of literally being in two places at one time." But she also talks about the special appeal of their doubleness for collectors and art lovers: "There is a little sense of mystery there. . . . Without exception, people are fascinated by their collaboration."

And where most collectives come together as a clash of opposites, in its unique Dumbacher version collaboration is "about two people coming together to refine an aesthetic," Finlay says.