"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?

------
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