Travelogue 21: San Bernardino, CA, May 2003
MeryLynn McCorkle
In a recent New York Times article, Roberta Smith excoriates the socially conscious/relevant
work proliferating in museums and arts festivals. In her words, these shows consistently
demonstrate “moralizing primness, eccentric materials, intellectual dryness,
multidisciplinary amorphousness or high-tech spectacle slowly revolving on a
pedestal of arrested artistic development”. I compare this arts movement,
the spawn of academia, to television series produced in the late sixties, early
seventies when it wasn’t enough to entertain or share information, you had
to preach. Preaching is a Bad Concept for reruns. And art once purchased by museums
is basically in perpetual reruns.
Smith goes on to
suggest that “commercial galleries, however driven by the profit motive,
may actually try harder to show work that directly engages interested viewers.”
She may be right, but commercial galleries, likehigh-end department stores, sell
what’s trendy today modified for their specific clientele. And what’s
trendy on almost every front is youth. I went into a gallery at Bergamot Station
a month ago and saw a painting show which looked like inadequately resolved first
year grad work. (No, I’m not referring to the Laura Owens show which is
at MOCA.) The gallerist was gushing about the pieces to a well to do woman with
one of those well stretched faces. “And the artist is still in grad school,”
he exclaimed, expecting this fact to be impressive. I couldn’t help myself,
I said out loud, “Yes, and it definitely looks like grad school work.”
Both trendy and
preachy are age appropriate manifestations of adolescence. Of the two, I prefer
trendy. But adolescent interests are very limited. So imagine my delight to see
rooms of engaging work, work which doesn’t look like it was made from the
mold-du-jour, at the Robert W. Fullerton Museum on the campus of Cal State San
Bernardino.
The entryway gallery
held work by Stevie Love, really globby thick work. While I found some to be
less than successful, the hanging piece (image attached) was a visual delight.
A second gallery held paintings by Daniel Du Plessis, Boschian floral paintings
which seemed to grow around the objects appended. I had fun trying to discern
what was trompe l’oeil and what was actually dimensional. The main gallery
curated by Sue Joyce held major pieces by Catya Plate. Entitled “Extra Sensory
Perception” these were a cross between freak show props, Mutter Museum type
scientific displays, altars and painting. Each multi-part piece focused on one
of the senses and required interaction from the viewer – to open the panels,
to smell, to touch, to guess. An amazingly generous project.
