'Jekyll Island' group show at Honor Fraser

WHAT IS "Jekyll Island"? A reality television series that emphasizes survival skills? A new ride at Six Flags Magic Mountain? Despite evoking any number of pop culture references, "Jekyll Island" is in fact this year's title and theme for the annual summer group show at Honor Fraser gallery on La Cienega. The exhibition, opening Saturday, features 41 pieces, including videos, paintings and drawings by 15 artists.

"We were looking for mindful art that wanted to express the psychological state of a particular generation -- the postindustrial generation," says Erik Parker, a Brooklyn artist who curated the exhibit with Vienna- and Athens-based independent art critic-curator Max Henry. "Jekyll Island could be this resort place between the sublime and the ridiculous." (In fact, there is a resort of that name off Georgia, but it's a coincidence.)

The dystopian idea of an "island" seems to mirror a media-biased culture of information and misinformation overload. The added twist, says Parker, is "an element of conspiracy theory involved in the undertones of some of our thinking."

Such alienation from the status quo seems to permeate the work of Dutch artist Joep van Liefland, which includes inkjet prints of movie posters as well as video pieces. The poster "Hollywood Was Yesterday" seems to associate the Oscar with Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad -- as the former gets pulled down in front of what appears to be a smoking Hollywood sign.

For New York-based, San Francisco-born Peter Saul, the societal dissatisfaction takes the form of a disgruntled corporate "suit" in an office, in his acrylic and oil painting "Stuck." Saul -- the subject of a 40-year retrospective now at the Orange County Museum of Art -- is, as Parker says, an "underground underdog." In "Stuck," he portrays his cubicle-inclined protagonist with knives boring into him. "I sometimes read the New York Times business section and I feel like people who work in offices feel sorry for themselves," says Saul, who has never worked in an office. At 74, he is the oldest artist in "Jekyll Island," and one of two artists around whom the curators built the show aesthetics.

The other -- four decades Saul's junior -- is Athens-born, Vienna-based artist Jannis Varelas. The exhibition includes two of his mixed media on paper pieces from his "Proletkult -- Opera Costume X" series. Their subject is opera attire from the former Soviet Union in the '20s. Varelas' artwork is known for featuring often primitive occult totems and tribal accouterments with arcane symbols, and linking them to our contemporary world.

"I connect ancient wisdom with modern culture through symbols and archetypal forms, because I really do identify with what is called the genealogy of knowledge," he says.

Parker sums up the work (and possibly the entire show) by adding: "It's like a new 21st century language."

JEKYLL ISLAND

WHERE: Honor Fraser, 2622 S. La Cienega Blvd., L.A.

WHEN: Opens 6-8 p.m. Sat. (featuring special performance by Lizzi Bougatsos and Sadie Laska); ends Aug. 28. Regular hours: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays.

PRICE: Free

INFO: (310) 837-0191, honorfraser.com