Linked by Their Latino Heritage, 16 Artists Embrace Physical, Social, Political Landscapes

The 16 artists who have been brought together in the show “Presente!” at the Acevedo Gallery (4010 Goldfinch) are linked by their common Latino heritage, but little else. The themes they embrace range from the physical to the social and political landscapes, and their approaches vary from the saccharine and blandly decorative to the poignant and penetrating. There are highs and lows in this spotty survey, but the highs are worth searching out.

Among the most exciting works to be introduced here are the colored pencil drawings of Los Angeles artist J. Michael Walker. In his excruciatingly detailed “George Washington and the Founding Fathers Welcome the Contras into Heaven,” the patriots, a group of ethereal spirits, extend greetings and open arms to a scowling gang of thugs in khakis, sporting trophies of decapitated heads and terrorizing angels on all sides.

Walker’s genius for vivid, detailed description emerges as well in his “P’ Al Pueblo” (slang for “going to the pueblo”), a marvelous portrait of a traveling group as much as a cultural phenomenon.

Other highlights include the monumental drawings of Artemio Sepulveda, whose “Madonna” portrays the nobility and resignation of a young mother, and Domingo Ulloa’s sensitive pastel drawings depicting the quiet struggles of harvesters and the homeless.

Los Angeles artist Frank Romero lightens the tone with his playful miniature cars in painted wood, and softens it with his lush painting of a reclining nude beside a small red car. Willie Herron presents snatches from the heated urban drama of L.A., while San Diegan Raul Guerrero renders the magical, spiritual qualities of a place in his series, “Oaxaca, Oaxaca.”

The show continues through March 31.

Geer Morton’s recent paintings invoke the Expressionist notion that the canvas is an arena of action, a stage for the artist’s gestures and not merely an impartial mirror. The translation of observed reality into two-dimensional painted surface transpires here without artifice or trickery--Morton doesn’t paint to fool the eye, but to please it.

His landscapes, still lifes and portraits, on view through April 2 at the A.R.T./Beasley Gallery (2802 Juan St.), are good, solid paintings in the Bay Area figurative tradition.

A student of Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn in the early 1960s, Morton followed their lead in merging gestural brushwork with recognizable subject matter. While skimping on the compositional and chromatic freedom that so enlivened the paintings of his teachers, Morton nonetheless developed an energetic style, faithful to his quotidian subjects. His process is bared honestly, the application of paint in thick, indulgent strokes made both visible and delectable, each patch of paint flirting with independence from its referent.

In his floral still lifes much more so than in his landscapes or portraits, Morton relaxes into a loose, exuberant style, where paint is all, whether articulating a cluster of blossoms or the space between them. Ever true to the entire painted surface, Morton undermines the hierarchical distinction between figure and background, often letting the painted ground wrap around the subjects to enclose and define them.

Within the intimate, narrow confines of these studies, which he calls “love poems to the flowers my wife grew,” Morton begins to dissolve structure to make room for a freshness and vibrancy that is most apparent when he works on paper. His paintings on canvas feel more restrained, but, however tame, Morton’s work is as comfortable and pleasurable to view as it must have been to make.

“Dreamworlds,” at the San Diego State University Art Gallery, features four Australian and four American artists whose work relates to the human body, either literally, as jewelry, or metaphorically, as sculptural wrappings, enclosures or embellishments.

The Australian contingent arrived in the form of a traveling show called “4 Australian Jewelers” from the National Gallery of Victoria. SDSU art professor and jeweler Arline Fisch curated the American half of the show.

A marvelously dynamic installation spatially unites the two efforts, but, on closer inspection, the show splits along nationalist lines, with most of the depth and coherence balancing on the Australian side. Though each of the Americans presents work of some interest--particularly Linda Threadgill’s elegant jewelry and eloquent wall constructions--as a group their sculptural objects and jewelry appear facile and less conceptually involved than their Australian counterparts.

Australian Kate Durham’s “charm necklaces,” for instance, are rich with associations. Long strands of shaped and stamped aluminum scraps, from milk bottle tops to automotive emblems and cutouts of faces, babies, scissors, guns and guitars, the necklaces are both playful and insightful responses to the icons of contemporary consumer culture. When the emblems are embedded in denim jeans and jacket along with safety pins and chains, the effect resembles a form of punk chic, but ultimately, the garments are less about toughness than self-conscious artifice, and the captivating overlap of sophistication and naivete.

Carlier Makigawa’s sculptural objects and jewelry derive from such architectural forms as arches and stepped pyramids. Articulated by precise steel armatures, the forms enclose solid shapes of stone or other malleable materials, sometimes painted and flecked with gold leaf. Architectonic structures normally used as monument and shelter are simplified here and transformed into elegant ornamentation.

Similarly intelligent and beautiful are Margaret West’s series of suspended slate and steel discs and Rowena Gough’s organic armatures and “arm skins.” By elevating worn objects from the level of personal decoration to the realm of social and psychological ideas, this work, and ultimately the entire show, succeeds in redefining traditional notions of bodily adornment.

The show continues through April 6.