Strange beauty

Young Chang

Get close -- maybe even uncomfortably close -- to Kristin Calabrese’s

painting “Luck of the Draw” and you’ll see that the apartment being shown

is so much more than just a ramshackle room.

Yes, the ceiling of this abandoned dwelling place drips with peeling

paint. The floor is speckled with debris from above. Walls are cracked,

drawers are open, cabinets are open, the counter is messy.

But inspect the smaller contents of the scene that is part of the

Orange County Museum of Art’s 2002 California Biennial and you’ll see

fresh tomatoes on the counter, celery stalks and a just-baked looking

loaf of bread.

The words “I’m not over you” wrap around a can of tuna in the bottom

cupboard. “I hate you” scrolls around a stout bottle of spice. “I still

love you” banners across a “can of who knows what,” said co-curator of

the exhibit Irene Hofmann.

“She’s created the beautiful out of the distressing,” Hofmann added,

of artist Calabrese.

Which can be said of most of the dozen artists featured in this year’s

biennial show. The works are edgy, thoughtful, some disturbing, some at

first confusing and each of them strangely beautiful.

The biennial looks at pieces created in the past two years by

California artists. The purpose isn’t to survey as much as it is to take

art’s “pulse,” wrote co-curators Hofmann and Elizabeth Armstrong in the

introduction to the show’s catalog.

Open Sunday through Sept. 8, the biennial celebrates the talent of

artists born in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

“We made a conscious decision to focus on an emerging generation of

artists, as a lot of biennials do, in the tradition of highlighting young

and new work,” said Armstrong, also the acting director of the museum.

While past biennials featured artists from one area of California, be

it the Bay Area or Los Angeles, this year’s show scanned work from all

over the state.

“There are so many good artists in this state, and there’s no [other]

California biennial,” Armstrong said. “California artists often feel

underrecognized in the rest of the country. . . . Yet we all know it’s a

vital area where a lot of artists are choosing to live now.”

The pulse-taking reports that our artistic environment is heavily

influenced by youth culture, ethnic diversity, technology, Hollywood and

then the most mundane, inconspicuous things.

“It really gives you a more general sense of attitudes and energies

and sensibilities,” Armstrong said. “For me, it’s the combination that’s

really exciting.”

Through stills that land on the wall from a DVD projection, artist

Rebeca Bollinger makes art out of repeated images of a chain-link fence,

stop signs and parts of a parking lot.

Yoshua Okon’s “Cockfight,” a video installation (also with

photographs) involving one girl sticking her tongue out and another girl

pretending to puke, artfully shows two Mexican, uniformed schoolgirls

being improper and acting more like stereotypes of rude, offensive men.

Okon’s statement is about two separate classes of Mexican society and

how they collide.

Charlie White’s series “Understanding Joshua” stars a grotesque

creature named Joshua. Each photograph shows a seemingly normal -- almost

too normal -- scene of beautiful, sleek people interacting. Joshua

mingles with someone on the side or sometimes smack in the middle of two

people in bed.

“Gossip,” a particularly evocative photo by White, shows four blond

women having afternoon tea and animated conversations. But two of the

blonds have their hands stroking what could only be called gross,

skin-colored chunks of alien-body-part-resembling stuff. White intends

the blobs to represent hidden parts of people and their personalities

that make them human, according to a statement in the catalog.

Finally, there is the work by two artists -- Stephanie Syjuco and

Yoram Wolberge -- whose work will greet you before you even step into the

main exhibit hall.

Among Syjuco’s pieces in the collection are two fake security systems

that don’t do a thing. They look real -- with blinking red lights, angled

cameras, wires and everything -- but if you look closely, the cameras

often point at each other and the wires aren’t connected to anything

remotely electric.

One hangs above the entrance to the museum and one hangs above the

entrance to the biennial collection gallery.

“They have a direct effect on the viewer,” said museum spokesman Brian

Langston. “People act differently if they know they’re being watched.”

The artist is said to be describing a state she calls “neither here

nor there.”

Walk further into the museum and you’ll be greeted by Wolberger’s

blown-up miniatures, which are only some of his works.

“Toy Soldier” is a life-size version of a miniature toy soldier

magnified so intensely that you can even see the manufacturing defects on

and around his body. As if pulled from a mold containing hundreds of

other little soldiers, the piece is lined with a thin sheet of plastic

molding.

“Bride and Groom” shows a life-size version of a couple that would top

a wedding cake. They, too, are lined with sloppy plastic molding and with

smudgy eyes that make them, close up, almost scary.

“He exaggerates all the flaws,” Hofmann said of Wolberger’s work.

“Once it’s huge, it becomes really strange. He likes taking everyday

things and twisting them, turning them upside down and revealing the

everyday qualities in our lives and revealing the oddities of it.”

FYI

WHAT: 2002 California Biennial

WHEN: Sunday through Sept. 8. Museum hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Tuesday through Sunday.

WHERE: Orange County Museum of Art, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport

Beach

COST: $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and students, and free for members

and children younger than 16

CALL: (949) 759-1122