Art critic and Coagula Curatorial gallerist Mat Gleason’s web series, Modern Art Blitz, is an intentionally lo-fi, insightful series of artist interviews, shot on a couch in front of a green screen. As a host, Gleason is friendly and frenetic, his notorious reputation for the mean-spirited takedown in print noticeably absent. Embracing an “art for the people” aesthetic, Gleason shuns the pretension and talks process, personality and pop culture. He’s one of the curators of California Fine Arts Exhibition’s “Modern Art Blitz—The L.A. Invasion Exhibition,” and that three-chord, punk-rock accessibility seen in the interviews bleeds over into the choice of artists for this group show.
Teaming with local artist and curator Craig Sibley and Modern Art Blitz producer Abel Alejandre, Gleason brings Orange County the artwork of 25 LA and OC artists who have sat on his crowded couch. The work is affordable, approachable and, like conversation on the show, all over the map. There is something for practically any taste, from collages to sketches, shiny steel sculptures to cardboard art, political work to pieces only a museum could love.
Serena Potter’s flat, black-and-white sketches of still lifes—bric-a-brac, toys and old photos—aren’t especially revelatory; they won’t cause you to look at life any differently than you did before you saw them. Her painting of a June bug on brittle brown leaves, resting against a warm avocado background, expertly captures the shades and tints of complex natural forms, indicating her skill in color mixing. I liked the squares and lines and rich colors of Linda Arreola’s Untitled (med. yellow), but as striking as it is, it’s recycled Mondrian. I was enthralled with artist Measures’ mysterious Hurtling Into the Unknown, with its blurred streaks of light and color passing by a home at dusk. While it may be something as simple as the fuzziness of a car passing, it suggested the Speed Force of the Flash to this comic-book geek, and I can live with that interpretation.
On the flip of the spectrum, Alex Arizpe’s oil-and-enamel Untitled shows a couple having sex. His face is covered with a surgical particulate mask, eyes pinched in concentration of approaching orgasm, his body a mass of wet, elaborately painted scar tissue, arms wrapped around the blacked-out, faceless figure of a woman. Whether she’s a fantasy or an ode to the erotica of black-velvet paintings is unclear, but the picture is unique enough to deserve the once-over twice.
Some images speak in tandem: Clayton Campbell’s triptych photo spread Words We’ve Heard Since 9/11, with its young woman in mug shots, holding a sign reading, “I am a Terrorist.” White, female and without the visual bugaboos we associate with jihadists, it asks us to ponder what she’s done, if anything, which then leads us to wonder if we should be asking the same question about others we’d more readily make assumptions about. Charles Swenson’s striking oil painting British Figurine is a close-up of a metal soldier toy, caught in a thousand-yard stare, the flaking paint on its face giving him a corroded, war-ravaged visage that’s even more moving when you consider you’re looking at a toy.
I admired other pieces but had trouble seeing them outside of a museum collection: Dosshaus’ Piano is a life-size monochrome version, crafted from cardboard; a destroyed instrument, its exploding pieces hang from the ceiling on wire appearing to be flying into the air like shrapnel. It reminded me of the notorious Art of Noise video, minus the chainsaw and sledgehammer. It’s an awesome thing to gaze at, but the complete piece has a bench, stand and sheets of music, and the first person to accidentally sit on it—and we know that’s inevitable—will destroy it. Sibley’s equally impregnable and majestic sculpture Seeking UB2003-313 (Eris) is part dense CalTech science lesson (Eris is the name of a dwarf planet), fancy orrery, sleek Art Deco style and chilly Bauhaus architecture. Sandra Vista’s shocking pink TV Trays, laid out with sharpened colored pencils affixed point-up as though a spiky bed of nails, are ungainly mixed-medium sculptures, but they’re eye-catching as fuck, with the sweep and gradations of their heights, like tiny peaks and valleys.
Although the show is beautifully laid out, my regret is there’s not a single label of the medium used or date each work was made, just the name of the artist and the title on an accompanying price list. In the end, I had no idea whether the work was recent or something that had been collecting dust in Coagula’s backroom. All of that is fine in the DIY world, and while it’s not a deal breaker, it throws up a barrier to full accessibility. The brilliance of the talk show that this group exhibition is named for is that it humanizes the artists and the process, giving us the story behind the work by bringing us in to appreciate what went into its creation. The work on display here would have benefited from that same attention.
“Modern Art Blitz—The L.A. Invasion Exhibition” at California Fine Arts Exhibition, 207 N. Broadway, Ste. P, Santa Ana, (714) 519-4013. Open by appointment; closing reception during the March 4 Artists’ Village Art Walk. Free.
Dave Barton has written for the OC Weekly for over twenty years, the last eight as their lead art critic. He has interviewed artists from punk rock photographer Edward Colver to monologist Mike Daisey, playwright Joe Penhall to culture jammer Ron English.