OCMA "Disorderly Conduct" Art Review

Photo: Glenn Kaino's "Learn to Win or You Will Take Losing for Granted"

If we’re living in interesting times as it is said, then by extension creations of that time must be equally interesting. With that in mind, perhaps the present is not so interesting after all.

The Exhibition “Disorderly Conduct” at OCMA is paired against OCMA’s collection show “Art Since the 60’s, California Experiments”. The collection show documents the radical end of Modernism as it twisted and turned its way out of formalism and pushed conceptual concerns to the fore.

The era was challenging. One had to find footing as an artist and as a citizen. Nothing was taken for granted. The test was rigorous.

The “Disorderly” exhibition by contrast knows what art is and knows its era. It’s loud, it’s about lifestyle, and its not so much concerned about ideas. It just wants to assert itself. The viewer is more consumer than beholder. That’s not to say that there aren’t some interesting objects and some good ideas. But, even the best works just add to the din, the scream that pulls on us to look, to buy, and to pay ... attention. Where is the engagement for the viewer beyond the spectacle?

These two exhibitions side by side are like an evening of television, “Entertainment Tonight” followed by “Masterpiece Theater”. I think we are living in a Mannerist era and the “Disorderly” show typifies that style. It is studied, manicured and mannered for an effect. The organic response of Late Modernism was difficult but engaging. The “Disorderly” show leaves me passive, unengaged.

So, what’s so bad about the mannered? Nothing really, as long as you’re just looking for entertainment. Pearl Hsiung’s paintings are fun, bright spray paint and stenciled, large enough to capture you for a moment. Glenn Kaino’s stop-action montaged photos of a confrontation between color-coded individuals is the best work in the show. It’s inventive and more metaphoric than all the other works combined. It gets my vote as the keeper in the show.

The pairing of these two exhibits is actually quite brilliant. The more historical show is still difficult. It still challenges you and makes you active with the ideas and forms. The contemporary exhibit is entertaining but eventually empty of deep issues, save the Kaino piece. Give it a walk through but then cross the hall to spend your time in the permanent collection exhibit.

--A Wonderful Chap

"Disorderly Conduct" at OCMA Appears to be Disorganized at OCMA

I suppose I shouldn’t get worked up over minor annoyances… it’s a little like focusing on the water spot on my wineglass when I should be sipping the happy grapes instead. But I can’t. It’s not my style. I find metaphors in vignettes, and this review shows why art is increasingly so inaccessible for the under-40 crowd.

I managed to enter the doors of OCMA’s show, Disorderly Conduct, just as thirty OCC college students rolled off a yellow bus and into the main gallery. While they milled about looking embarrassed and lost, I took a quick loop though the 60’s show. Great stuff there. First class work. Of course, every museum or gallery seems to have a simultaneous 60’s-70’s show up right now (LACMA, MOCA, OCMA… doesn’t anyone compare notes before posting a show?) and the overload of era images was numbing. If you’ve been through OCMA at all in the last 10 years, you’ve seen all this slick before.

I took one quick pass thorugh the Disorderly Show, noting the painted house and giant chessboard. I wanted to get back to the stop-action video before that gaggle of students descended on the space.

I needn’t have worried, as it wasn’t the students that created the problem, but one of the docents assigned to give the group a tour. I overheard him (how could I not, he was speaking at decibel 170) telling one of the OCC profs that he thought he was giving a tour of the 60’s show, and not Disorderly. It should have been a sign. The poor prof grimacing behind his mod moustache should have thanked the guy, turned, and run. But he was either too sweet or too trusting or both.

What lay ahead was not a “tour” or guided study of the works, but a scattered, misinformed melee of ill thought out banter. I made the mistake of entering one gallery room and sidling up behind some aggrieved-looking students as the docent started in on Daniel Joseph Martinez’s piece, “The House That America Built”

He started by pointing out that the cabin was modeled after “William David Thoreau’s” Walden Pond. The literary snob in me cringed. It was bad enough that he got the writer’s name wrong; it’s HENRY DAVID, you dork! He then remarked that Thoreau was interested in the idea of civil disorder (um, don’t you mean disobedience?) and made a dismal attempt to describe what Thoreau was looking for by writing in his tiny cabin out on that pond. Never once did he mention the idea of utopia.

What he docent did manage to master was the fact that the cabin was painted using Martha Stewart colors in lavender and yellow squares, with uneven teal plywood slabs hung at skewed angles covering most of the portals. He then went into a rant about Martha’s insider trading debacle, and listed some the people involved.

As the poor prof tried to reign in the wandering docent with a gentle nudge towards metaphoric inquiry “Hmm, do you think the misshapen plywood hung oddly reflects the skewed mentality of Kaczynski?” The docent blinked. Blankly. Then, ducking the gentle lob of sanity’s grenade, he bumbled on with the group into the next room.

I couldn’t take it anymore, and felt bad for the students shifting uncomfortably in their UGG boots, flip-flops, and vegan-approved flats. The few that were contributing to the “conversation” seemed determined to make the most of what appeared to be a joke. Was this a joke? The museum sent out a docent that didn’t know most of the works’ titles and knew even less about actual verifiable history? What message does that send to “the kids” when they’re treated like holes to shovel bunk into?

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As for the art, a few pieces stood out:

Pilar Albarracin’s large-scale photograph “La Noche” of a woman strapped to the top of her car along the luggage. Woman as object, foreign women as strange and objectified, the ocean as journey and subconscious, scenes of domestic disorder and absurdity all sprung up in my mind when this piece caught my eye. Good work.

Glenn Kaind’s “Learning to Win or You Will Take Losing for Granted” was a brilliant piece made up of fruit crates and ammo boxes cut down and assembled into a chessboard. The Kings and Queens and Pawns et al we all replaced with bronze hands in suggestive poses (Fuck You, Come Here, Power to the People) and I wanted badly to touch it. I know I REALY like a piece of art if I want to touch it. There was so much layered under here. Violence, sex, gesture (all important to an artist, but even more important in this volatile world) and the futility of “winning” something that seems lost before the game begins.

Martin Kersels “Lover” five photographs of a fat, old, and unfortunately-dressed man doing what appeared to be calisthenics in nature. The awkwardness and uncomfortable emotion in these photos were intriguing to me. There was a fragility of human emotion implied that was palpable in his sad poses.

Most interesting of all: Robin Rhode’s “Color Chart” a stop-action video where men in uniforms (Industrial=Painter’s Coveralls and Mask; Urban=Hoodie and Baggy Jeans; etc.) brutalized each other. The ground on which they “stood” was a broken row of bricks that they often used to pick up and throw at each other. The effect was heightened by a totally different piece set on the opposite wall: Rodney McMillian’s singing “The Way We Were” in the background was a sappy, wrought counterpoint to the faceless, random violence in front of the viewer. The brilliant part was this: by slowing down the action, by stopping time and letting the viewer anticipate the next blow, the effect of anger and frustration at being UNABLE to stop the inevitable was spiked. It’s a choice literary device that was amplified by film. Truly thought provoking.

The rest of the work: Disorderly, both in layout in the gallery and in lack of impact.

--The 925

Which came first, the couch or the thought "What do We Put Above It"?

As we criticize other artists we need to criticize ourselves even harder to make sure that our art is challenging humankind to ponder its existence. Remember, any of our work might be purchased and put above the couch.

And as much as the couch has gotten a bad wrap in the minds of "serious" artists, this is nonetheless a very personal and intimate space, it is a space where humans not only try to escape the banality of daily life, but it is also often a place where they become snared by the biased junk getting fed to them from the media.

So let's make sure that our work is speaking loudly about "something" as it rests above its owner. March 16, 2008
-- ART

Disorderly Conduct at OCMA

I am going to be honest and risk sounding narrow-minded.
The show on balance was a dud. It was so boring I had to walk through it about five times praying that something would really grab me. Well I felt pinched more than grabbed. The show is very small and while that helped me focus on the few artists involved and I could therefore give them all time, it felt like an incomplete idea.

Peaal C. Hsiung painting intrigued me but she has big paintings and small ideas. Glenn Kaino's chess piece was beautiful to look at. Nice metaphores as hand signs. Gestures as Passive or aggressive, the peace and love next to the fuck you. The accompanying limited palette portraits had subdued emotion the way the subjects contemplated their next moves.

The Condolizza Rice inspired work made me curious as to why the artist has become obsessed with this woman. ( an interesting note, the artist has directly copied Bridget Burns who has been drawing on paint chip samples from home depot for a decade). The eyes falling like bombs from the fighter jet? Huuuum. It seemed lame at first but I would admit it did have some impact.

OCMA is a great museum space with very high ceilings and great lighting. They hang the work with lots of empty wall space to make each work stand out. Basically anything you hang in that environment should look good! I could hang my dirty boxer shorts on the wall and it would look profound. How is it most of this stuff still manages such a weak visual response? Is it because artists have been taking away so much that nothing is left? Less is not always more, sometimes it's just less.
Much of the text I read was far more interesting than the artwork and I see that a lot with shows these days.
Mike Kelleys "Gospel Rocket" was an abysmal failure.

A black man signing "The Way We Were" in clown makeup? Wow, there is a real profound idea! He admits in the text that he watched too many music videos growing up and that is how he came up with the idea. He was interested in how the performers would lose themselves in the songs and he wanted to do that. My daughter sings her favorite songs around the house to her I Pod and has makeup and dress far more interesting than this guy.
OCMA used real insight and some of their very limited funds to buy this piece!

We have all seen the Fred Astaire film with the turning room. This guys work is trying to be funny and serious at the same time. Huuuuum...NOT! I'll go with silly and useless.

I have talked to a few other T.E.A. Party members about the attendance at this show. When I saw the show I was the only person in the building who didn't work there and the same for the other members I talked to. Maybe they should show work that truly has value instead of trying so hard to be arcane and clever with the shows they curate.

OCMA hired a friend of mine to promote the exhibits and try to get people to see the work. He's so persuasive he could get the Pope to invest in a new Mormon Temple but he admits that getting folks to see these shows may be beyond even his considerable powers.

Perhaps there is just not that much good work being made right now that is conceptual in nature. Art is not like science, it does not always advance or get better with time.

--The Fish

Disorderly Conduct at OCMA

Overall, very good. Of course I am a sucker for conceptual and politicized work. But I thought they had a reasonable global mix of artists and a fair cross-section of ages.

Hmm, my favorites? Karen Finley's Condoleezza Rice eyes were terrific, I might have enjoyed that the best. I felt like I could be drawn in by the allure of the eyes and then pleasantly slapped in the face once I was informed who it was I was looking at. My only reservations is that I don't think the piece would communicate its message without thestatements. However it did get across its seductive charm which I think was the tantalizing point.

Glenn Kaino's chessboard was also terrific, maybe because I related to the hands. But it was very effective at getting across the idea of how life is a game and we make gestures, sometimes unpleasant, towards those on the other side of our beliefs (or what we think we know).

Of course I am always captivated by the intellectual depth of the work by Daniel Joseph Martinez. And this house has so many layers of meaning to be mined and the physical size of it forces the viewer to find out more and understand! Gee, Kaczynski's house painted by Martha!

Marin Kersel's Pink Constellation was fun and technically fascinating (and of course funny), but I am sorry, I wanted to get more of a point out of it--just me.

I guess I need to mention Mike Kelley: large scale, complex, expensive, richly conceptual, but leaves me a little empty--feeling like I am being visually teased in a contrived sort of way. I guess a little too theatrical for me.

Anyway, that is about it. I enjoyed the show.

--ART