articles and reviews

Jan. 16, 2009

The 75th Crocker- Kingsley Exhibition was almost orphaned this year because the Crocker didn't have a space large enough for the biennial competitive show while construction of the museum's new annex is going on.

But a savior, in the form of the Central Library in downtown Sacramento, stepped in and offered to host the show this year.

It was a fine and generous thing to do, but that space also has size restrictions that have affected the nature of the show, which is designed to encompass the vibrant art scene throughout California.

Strung out along the narrow balcony of the Tsakopoulos Library Galleria in the Central Library, this manifestation of the Crocker-Kingsley is hard to get a fix on. That's partly due to the nature of the space – a long, undulating, circular corridor overlooking the downstairs atrium. It's also because of the beige walls that offer a neutral backdrop but lack the kind of chromatic dynamism the museum has offered in the past when exhibit coordinators Steve Wilson and Patrick Minor were often able to paint the walls for each new show.

Because so many of the works are quite similar in size, they seem to blend into each other, and moving along the corridor with its shallow bends you get little chance to compare works.

Essentially there are no sight lines in the space save for the distant look you get when standing on one side of the galleria looking across to the other. One of the pleasures of the Crocker-Kingsley has always been its installation in the museum, where works of varying sizes and intensity compete for your attention and interact with each other.

Further, whether through happenstance or design, juror Michael Bishop's selections seem to run to colors that echo the gray, foggy days Sacramento is known for this time of year. It's not that there aren't splashes of bright color, but they are few and far between, exceptions being Janice Porter's surreal abstraction "Rigors of Levitation," Vicki Walsh's in-your-face painting of an oversized woman's face screaming under red lipsticklike ellipses, and Trevor Koch's enigmatic ceramic sculpture "Implement," which won a $250 honorable mention in the show.

Curiously, the three are grouped together near the end of one long wall as if they were refugees from the overall blandness of the show.

That said, there are some interesting works in the show, which is celebrating its diamond anniversary, and drew 1,500 entries by more that 500 artists this time out. Awards were given in the amount of $6,250, with $3,000 going to the Best of Show prize won by San Franciscan Agelio Batle for a fistlike head limned with curvilinear lines of suspended graphite. It's a tough piece that calls up associations with Maori art as well as Art Brut.

First prize of $1,500 went to an equally compelling piece by Kin Kwok, also of San Francisco. "Orange Faces" is an army of tiny, regimented human figures wearing orange masks, that range from animal and bird heads to surreal toppers that might belong to extra- terrestrials. It's a strong piece that offsets the anonymity and conformity of the figures with the bizarre heads, which are all different and equally strange. Sacramento's Gioia Fonda won the second prize of $1,000 with an acrylic- watercolor-gouache-and-ink painting titled "She Wears Perfume for Luck When She Plays Bingo." A symbolic portrait, it's made up of tiny, intricately painted patterns shaped into a collagelike image that might be made up of printed fabric but is actually hand-done through a labor-intensive process.

Third prize of $750 went to a beautifully crafted yet ominous mixed-media installation of wood, motor, electric parts, halogen bulbs and plexi, titled "Projector" by Geoffrey Tuttle of Sacramento. It takes the form of a seismograph across which a fighter plane drops bombs at intervals visible as a series of bright flashes. It's a chilling comment on war and modern weaponry.

A number of pieces stand out for their unusual use of materials. Tim Armstrong's "Tree Memorial" is a photograph of a flour-and-water drawing on a city street that calls up memories of Bruce Naumann's ironic "flour/flower" paintings from the 1960s.

Danielle Giudici Wallis' "Temporary Shelter" is an umbrella made of roofing shingles, wood, fluffy pink insulation and steel. Camilla Newhagen's "Felina" is a truncated female figure made of recycled undergarments that reminds one of Hans Bellmer's erotic dolls.

As one might expect of juror Bishop, the sculptor who made the once-controversial fox railing around the balcony of the Galleria, there are a number of strong three-dimensional pieces in the show. I liked best Maxwell Stolkins' painterly reclining ceramic heads installed in the entryway to the library, Sole Grant's ceramic landscape "Main Street," which is reminiscent of Robert Arneson's Alice street tableaux though done in earthy red clay, and George Jercich's perspective-altering giant mousetrap made of wood, steel, blown glass and graphics.

On the other hand, there aren't a lot of strong paintings in the show, although Anna Efanova's "Transformation," Rogelio Manzo's expressive "Day One," and Gage Opdenbrouw's nostalgic "Spring Day" stood out. Despite the drawbacks of the show, it is free this year, courtesy of the library.

Bishop will present a lecture about his art as well as the Crocker-Kingsley from a juror's perspective at noon Jan. 24 in the East Meeting Room of the library.