September 7, 2007

Fullerton show puts art in motion
Review: 'Humana Ex-Machina' makes philosophical points with imagination and humor.
By DANIELLA WALSH
Special to the Register

"YES," "NO," "MAYBE NOT," are words one utters routinely, but when artist Jim Jenkins sets them into motion as three kinetic works of art, they acquire profundity beyond mere wordplay. "YES" is a bright red, roughly three-feet tall mechanical sculpture that hops around like a used-car huckster in a television ad while "MAYBE NOT" is lethargic, in keeping with its indecisiveness.

"NO" clearly has the starring role: In shiny black letters "NO" has been mounted on a base resembling a recumbent bike. Slightly skewed and full of attitude, a video shows it rolling (powered by a lawnmower motor) through Starbucks, Wal-Mart and Lowe's parking lots and winding up at the CSUF campus where it seems to glide, ghostlike, through the gallery's glass doors.

"NO" is further elucidated by interviews in which the artist asks passers-by what the word means to them. While most respond with variations of "duh", a homeless man offers a movingly articulate answer.

Jenkins, a CSUF art instructor, has combined refined engineering, philosophy, politics and art, elements that also lie at the core of an exhibition of kinetic art at the Main Gallery at Cal State Fullerton titled "Humana Ex-Machina: Kinetic Commentaries on the Nature of Being."

Curated by Karen Crews and Johnny Sampson, who are enrolled in CSUF's graduate exhibition design program, the show features works by Arthur Ganson, Gregory Barsamian, Bernie Lubbell and Jenkins that engage intellect and emotion with humor, philosophical insight and a touch of seduction as seen in Ganson's "Machine with Violin," 1997, in which a small marabout feather gently and soundlessly caresses the violin's strings, thus evoking music by Mozart or Vivaldi or Gypsy Czardas.

Ganson has also assembled "Corey's Yellow Chair," 1997, an intricate piece that consists of a star-shaped bicycle chain that, while revolving, assembles and disassembles a small yellow chair. Ganson is a master at creating wire mechanisms. Moving or still, their interplay of line and form and motion, as seen in the Zen-like "Machine with Scraps of Paper," 1999, is irresistibly beautiful. Placed atop thin wire poles, the paper scraps resemble birds in flight.

However, Barsamian steals his own show with "No Never Alone," 1997, a complex installation centered on a shrouded figure resembling the kind seen in some "spiritual consultation parlors." Ominous looking, it sits surrounded by myriad hands clutching books or carrots or pictures. Lit by the strobes, the hands appear in constant motion. Even though the piece inspires more interpretations than there are hands, my take, perhaps prompted by the carrots, is that people often do the right thing not for its own sake but to look good before themselves and others.

Lbbell, however, blew me away with his poignancy, dark humor and self-deprecating fatalism, as evidenced in an enormous installation made mostly from wood and wire, with latex approximations of his lungs and heart. Titled "Etiology of Innocence," 1999, it is a tour de force inspired by the advancing failure of his body: The heart pumps blood in one instance and in another (represented by a tambourine doubling as a drum) beats very slowly and irregularly. Roughly hewn wooden "limbs" move creakily when someone laboriously cranks a handle

Weighted clockwork mechanisms meanwhile are also kept aloft by the cranking but come crashing down slowly once it stops. There is also a suggestion of an EKG diagram machine ("Aphasiogram," 1999) that turns in circles while being marked by a stubby pencil. That contraption is also moved by hand. Meanwhile, observing the tambourine "heartbeat" again, I thought I could feel my own slowing down in freaky empathy.

"Humana Ex-Machina…" is the latest in a string of exhibitions that are organized from first research to finished exhibition by CSUF's MFA candidates under the tutelage of Mike McGee (currently on sabbatical) and Marilyn Moore. A forum for tomorrow's museum and gallery professionals, the shows rank among the best-kept secrets of the O.C. art scene.

'Humana Ex-Machina: Kinetic Commentaries on the Nature of Being'

* Where: The Main Gallery at Cal State Fullerton. 800 North State College Blvd., Fullerton. (Visual Arts Center; State College Boulevard and Arts Drive)

* When: Through Sept. 29. Gallery hours: Noon to 4 p.m., Tuesday to Friday; Noon to 2 p.m. Saturday; closed Sundays and Mondays.

* How much: Free

* Call: 657-278-3262