A Sartorial Exhibit for the Eyes Only

SAN DIEGO —  Liza von Rosenstiel has a quirky sensibility that manages to reconcile the fickle world of fashion with the ephemeral realm of the spirit. The Seattle artist’s first solo show in San Diego, at the Linda Moore Gallery, is titled “Fall Collection: A New Line of Suits and Shoes,” and, sure enough, von Rosenstiel has introduced a selection of garments with true sartorial splendor.

She has painted three men’s suits, then hung them on the wall, flat and stiff as a steamroller’s victim. Deep forest green dominates “The Gesture,” which embodies Von Rosenstiel’s twin motives of humor and humble reverie. Seven elegantly painted hands gesture quietly across the surface: One holds a sprig of crimson leaves, one reaches forward in greeting, one points, two others are raised upward in devotion. Two more arms, cut out of wood and sheathed in gold leaf, hang on top of the jacket’s sleeves, and a wedge of gold also gleams out from the suit’s exposed lining and hem.

Von Rosenstiel makes the suit an icon of human tenderness and communication. These hands are symbols of deep emotional communion; they are timeless, secular substitutes for the holy figures in sacra conversazione (sacred conversation) in Renaissance religious paintings.

And yet, for all of the touching profundity of these images, Von Rosenstiel’s work is oddly funny. Her painted and embellished women’s shoes touch the heart, too, while gently tickling the funny bone. A dozen pairs of shoes are mounted on the gallery walls, standard dress shoes with heels of medium height and a surfaces redefined in oil paint. Several have sprouted brass or silver wings, a moon or antennae topped with typewriter keys.

Von Rosenstiel transforms the function of these pedestrian objects from practical modes of transport to vehicles for a more transcendent journey. Several bear the image of birds, one has twin compasses on the toes, another shows a moonlit empty boat. The pair titled “To The Moon” shines gold on the inside and a deep, celestial blue on the outside. On each shoe a young man among golden stars appears to gaze upward--his gaze and countenance are both heavenly, and the shoes suggest an era when astronomy was not yet a science distinct from supernaturalism.

Cinderella fantasies and cosmic musings blend surprisingly well here, and the shoes manage to be both goofily earthbound and mystically aloft. Von Rosenstiel’s is not a heavy-handed spirituality, but a sweet, sincere searching with irresistible charm.

Three paintings on canvas also hang in this show, and these are unabashed visions of supernatural presence. Each features a passageway drenched in light, within an ambiguous environment of vines and Renaissance-like framed portraits hanging on dissolving walls. In “The Sentinel,” white light rolls out of the doorway like a tumbleweed. In “Winter Light,” the passageway gleams a blue cool as an ice cube.

Von Rosenstiel has her feet on the ground, but her head is in the rich vapors above. It’s a fruitful position that the artist has made thoroughly accessible and engaging.

Linda Moore Gallery, 1611 West Lewis St., through Oct. 12. Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday .

The spiritual heights of Von Rosenstiel’s work are worlds apart from the cerebral musings of Jan van Munster , a Dutch artist whose works are now on view at Quint/Krichman Projects. The artist has just completed a two-month residency in San Diego and the Quint/Krichman warehouse space showcases both his recent efforts and earlier works shipped from Holland.

Both Van Munster’s theme and his medium are energy--electrical, manual and psychological. He has sculpted and polished large black granite orbs that convey the life latent in eggs, for instance, while suggesting the polarity of positive and negative energy by inlaying their dark surfaces with red granite plus and minus symbols. Those symbols recur with a nearly deadening monotony in Van Munster’s work, despite the show’s material diversity.

He works in neon, liquid mercury, painted copper, as well as granite and also manipulates the temperatures of his sculptures, but all of his constructions hark back to that fundamental relationship between negative and positive energy.

Unfortunately, the tension between those two forces rarely emerges in Van Munster’s work. Instead, positive and negative simply coexist, as complements, in static, minimal forms that have minimal impact.

Three slim granite columns as tall as the artist himself are intended as symbols or surrogates for human presence. A shallow mercury pool atop each column spells out the first-person pronoun in English, Dutch and German. The mercury is visible only by holding a mirror to the top of the column. Though the artist has said his aim is to convey the hidden, threatening energy latent in individuals, that sense of threat is hardly evoked by these austere, elegant posts. Another small, sculptural work features a swastika inlaid in mercury, but the implied danger of both the symbol and the material remains just that--implied and remote.

Van Munster’s neon works are equally innocuous. “Dark-Light” is simply a vertical strip of neon, its top half subdued by a coat of black paint, its bottom half allowed to glow unhindered. “Energy Ring” is another mute object, a large copper ring, about 7 feet in diameter, that leans against a wall and is hot to the touch.

A few more compelling works do engage a push/pull dynamic akin to the tension implicit in the relationship of positive and negative energy. “Lingam, Noli Me Tangere” stands about 5 feet high, a solid black shaft with a head capped in delicate ice crystals. An electric compressor housed within forms the crystals, which coat the surface with a thin, glistening layer of snow. As the title suggests, the work is not to be touched--the warmth of a finger would destroy the effect--but the temptation is great.

Here and in an “Ice Table” and two smaller ice works, Van Munster has effectively bridged the sensuality of his materials with the cerebral nature of his concerns. Elsewhere, that sensuality feels suppressed by the slick sterility of the artist’s vision.

Quint/Krichman Projects, 5270-B Eastgate Mall, through Oct . 25. Open 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday , or by appointment (454-3409).