ART REVIEW : TANNER’S BIOLOGICAL VISIONS

Gooey, fetid, lush and erotic, Joan E. Tanner’s paintings seem to deal with the messiness of life. She makes you feel a bit like a kid in a biology lab, saying “Yuk” while drawing closer to inspect a fascinating spectacle.

Tanner’s show of 15 oils and 14 works on paper, at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (through Aug. 10), appears to be essentially about coupling, gestation and birth. Embryo-like forms swim in fluid masses of color. Biomorphic shapes ooze into human contours.

But there’s nothing graphic or clinical going on in these artworks. Tanner conveys her theme through an organic form of abstraction that continues the ideals and the style of Abstract Expressionism. She has waded into territory explored by the likes of Gorky and Baziotes, going beyond their relatively dreamy visions into the muck of carnal knowledge.

Though she favors vivid hues and thick, brushy pigment, Tanner makes fleshy paintings. It’s as if you are looking at life under a microscope that’s been knocked out of focus.

In “Discs Facing Off,” two comma-like entities confront each other, their heads filled with forms in the process of development. A shrouded red body reclines on a white oval in “Monk Carrier” while a coiled biomorph undulates below it. A “Crouched Emergent” in a drawing looks rather like a slug that could turn into a butterfly.

Classical columns and vases also find a place in Tanner’s biological visions. And whole cities and sections of countryside are spelled out in floating amoebic shapes. In short, she has invented a personal landscape from things seen and experienced. Even if you haven’t processed the information in the same way, you recognize it and understand what she’s talking about.

Probably the best thing about this art is that it feels like an authentic interpretation of experience without conforming to fashion. A Santa Barbara artist who has an influential following at home but is little known elsewhere, Tanner may be accused of painting “women’s experience.” Perhaps she does. If so, her line of questioning is such an intense mix of nurturing, sexuality and interior investigation, it can hardly be seen as limiting.

Tanner’s show is the second in a contemporary art series called “California Viewpoints.” Suzanne Caporael’s painting inaugurated the program. John Baldessari, Rick Stich and Steven Cortright will follow.