California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art

In the 2008 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, the tour de force is an animatronic sculpture by Daniel J. Martinez. It resonates in many ways. ¶ Beneath bright white fluorescent lights, Martinez has constructed a low white platform in a large white room reached by a gently sloping ramp. Near one corner, a lifelike latex sculpture of a man lies on its back on the floor. Dressed in white pants and white shirt, with close-cropped hair and facial stubble, the figure appears deranged. ¶ Its eyes are rolled back, its teeth bared. A chunky, hip-hop-style silver belt buckle spells out the name "Ishmael." At regular intervals, the reclining robot comes to mechanical life. ¶ An arm flops. A leg kicks. The head rolls forward and the torso twitches. ¶ When the flailing body parts hit the raised floor, it acts like a loud drum. The herky-jerky motion gets steadily more forceful, sometimes exposing the mechanical works beneath the floor that propel the man. The escalating racket is a cross between percussive music and a machine gun. It's exciting, but there's also a sense of relief when the figure finally pipes down and goes limp, returning to its static, soundless state. ¶ Ishmael, of course, is the narrator of Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick," in which he serves as a roving symbol for society's outcasts. It is one measure of Martinez's bracing audacity that he appropriates without hesitation an epic of American literary culture. The whiteness of the whale morphs into the abstract white cube of the modern art gallery -- as well as the dominance of European ancestry in contemporary culture. ¶ A bare white space is a popular emblem for a madhouse too. Martinez's flailing figure -- notably, a self-portrait of the artist -- is crazed and kept down within an institutional context, both social and artistic. He's also mechanically manipulated within it, unable to act independently.

By Christopher Knight

November 4, 2008