Surreality Show
Jophen SteinNs puzzling, disturbing juxtapositions of images appeal to ‘The 5 Deadly SensesN and beyond
Something mysterious and childlike but difficult to decipher currently resides inside the Box Gallery in Costa Mesa. Curated by Johnny Sampson, “The 5 Deadly Senses: A Jophen Stein Exhibition” is a one-man show that spurns viewer passivity, forcing you to engage if youNre going to get anything out of it. Few of the paintings on display are blatant illustrations of the exhibitNs title, so donNt feel too frustrated if you donNt “get” the paintings right off. Go with the flow of SteinNs images, and the elaborate puzzle boxes will reveal themselves, even if several donNt really kick into your brain until a few days later.
The confusion begins with the connecting image repeated throughout several of the pictures: A candle/birdhouse/lotus/shield thing that defies description—even if you use a lot of forward slashes. Whether itNs in the opening painting announcing the show (Prelude to Overture) or in the later Dalí-esque melting plants and flowers, I had no clue what it meant when I first saw it, and I still donNt.
What I did get—or at least imagine that I did—was a complex series of surreal metaphors, personal and political, that feel like they slipped directly out of SteinNs dreamscape.
In his diptych An Earwig ThatNs Louder Than Sound, machinery shaped like tubas, ear horns, blank comic-book air balloons and gramophones grind away at one another in a sweet metaphor for the process of hearing or thinking. His imagery—a little bearded man pulling a cart filled with earmuffs for sale, a girl jumping out of a disembodied ear, a black coffin being lowered into a cartographic EartH N Mdash;suggests that we barely listen, get lost and bury sounds/thoughts before weNve fully processed them. Equally odd, Tug Life has two sailors, both torsos without lower limbs, showing off their tattoos. The captain has a tattoo on his stomach, the second sheds a tear as the vein in his arm separates from the skin—along with a colorful, coiling mass of arm ink— and becomes an IV for a plant heNs holding.
Sailors also come into play in Cargo Holder, in which a bleary-eyed mariner holds a thin-stemmed liqueur glass and is literally boxed in by the colorful cargo behind him, the pink fleshy ceiling a giant, throbbing, hungover brain. Intermission boasts a small boy in a sailor shirt with his arms spread wide in joy or surrender.
Colonialism is the point of departure in a series of comic pictures featuring Intrepid Explorer archetypes—complete with pith helmets, monocles and muttonchops—alone or interacting with natives. In Popping in With Propositions, a colonialist, his facial hair built of leaves and flowers, pokes out of a jack-in-the-box, his tiny fingers lifting the lid of a PandoraNs box, either letting something out or seeing something that he wants to grab and cram inside. In Grower, a squat, dull-eyed native with a watering can supplies the potential labor, while in Planter, a white man grips the potential commodity in a blue flowerpot. In E.G. Savage Sings How to Fix a Broken Stick, the archetype, arms akimbo, belts out a song, his mouth a giant O. A gold-masked African warrior stands nearby, his phallic spear snapped near the blade, the omnipresent bird feeder/candle hovering in the air at the break.
SteinNs anthropomorphic foxes dressed in green rent-a-maid outfits, utility uniforms and French maid outfits doing menial janitorial jobs would feel right at home in a childNs sinister story book, but the looks on their faces—either staring directly at or dejectedly away from the viewer—says more about beasts of burden than any PETA ad.
The Box Made Promises takes the prize as most discomfiting: A bald-headed child with trees growing out of its eye sockets holds an untwisted wire hanger in its small hands, a cross-section of its head open, revealing a quiet pastoral scene inside. The hangerNs abortion connotations—along with a box in the background labeled “Home Lobotomy” resting on a blood-red dresser—refer us back to the earlier Earwig picture in a visceral Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind way.
I loved the title of the two panels in There WasnNt a Straight Bone in His Body and wascaptivated by the skull resting nose-deep in jungle foliage, the panel below a curved thigh bone, resting casually against a baby-blanket-blue background. Five small squares of color in the corner suggest a military insignia. Something mirroring the viewer awash in SteinNs images? A political statement about gays in the military? None of the above?
I donNt know, and in the end, it probably doesnNt matter, does it? It obsessed me enough that before I left, I did something INve never done before: I handed over my debit card and bought the painting right then and there.
INll stare at it some more and get back to you when I think I have it figured out.
“The 5 Deadly Senses: A Jophen Stein Exhibition” at the Box Gallery, 765 Saint Clair St., Ste. B, Costa Mesa, (714) 724-4633; www.boxboxbox.com. Open Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Through Dec. 5.
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.