ART REVIEW : 13 ARTISTS SHARE THEIR ‘REMEMBRANCES’

Time, memory and our relationship to the past are the subjects of an exhibition titled “Remembrances of Things Past,” on view through Jan. 18 at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Housed in a stately old building, the Long Beach Museum is the ideal setting for an exhibition of this nature, and “Remembrances,” curated by Connie Fitzsimons, delivers what it promises for the most part.

Presenting work by nine artists and a pair of two-person art teams, the show includes photographs, video, painting and film. The work is varied to the point that uninformed gallerygoers are unlikely to guess that there’s a unifying theme afoot. A brief explanation of the show’s premise posted at the museum entrance would be helpful.

Highlighting the exhibition is the West Coast premiere of a three-channel video installation by German artist Marcel Odenbach. Titled “As If Memories Could Deceive Me,” the piece incorporates classical music and disparate imagery including pre- and postwar political propaganda films, seductive commercials, the interiors of Baroque castles and footage of folk dancers and men at work. This highly ambitious piece is Odenbach’s attempt to expose the fascism of romantic art and to sift a personal history from the received imagery of his native country. His is a grand and dangerously nationalistic heritage, and Odenbach is visibly ambivalent as he rummages through a culture that encompasses man at his best and very worst.

Wandering farthest afield from the show’s premise is Doug Huebler, who juxtaposes framed blocks of text (of a mundane conversation between a man and a woman) with painted reproductions of such kitsch classics as “The Peaceable Kingdom.” It all seems to add up to an anti-war statement.

New York artist Laurie Simmons is another questionable inclusion. One of the pioneers of the Post-Modern movement, Simmons shows large monochromatic images of tourist sites--the Parthenon, Stonehenge--with life-size dollies in place of flesh-and-blood tourists. All artworks are, of course, about memory to a degree, but it’s hardly a primary component in Simmons’ work.

The most literal interpretations of the theme--no surprise here--are photographic works; above all else, photographs serve to embalm the past. Anne Turyn’s “Illustrated Memories” offer a child’s-eye view of the calves of a mother’s legs as she makes a bed, while Barbara Ess’ monochromatic prints work a neighboring turf. Artificially aged so as to appear cracked and scratched, Ess’ unbearably melancholy images depict two young girls sitting on a curb, a spooky suburban backyard, a rubber dolly in a bathtub.

Four collage portraits by Alexis Smith from a 1982 series titled “Christmas Eve, 1943” are in a similar mood, though her work is a bit more lurid. Smith pulls no punches with her portrait of a young serviceman in uniform smiling for the camera as he cries tears of blood.

The most unabashedly sentimental work is that of art team Komar & Melamid. Soviet immigrants, Komar & Melamid grew up surrounded by images of Stalin, but when he fell out of favor, his image virtually vanished from Russian life. Komar & Melamid understandably felt as if a vital component of their collective childhood had been snatched away, and they attempt to reclaim it by painting Stalin in the Social Realist style in which he’s best known.

Also on view is a video installation by Dara Birnbaum, massive Polaroids from Marina Abramovic/Ulay’s “Modus Vivendi” series, a slide presentation by Richard Baim, and three short stories by German artist Jochen Gerz that are presented with complementary photo collages.