Centro Cultural’s ‘On the Spot’ Applies to Both Viewers, Artists

“On the Spot” is an apt title for the current exhibition at the Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park--for several reasons. On one level, it denotes the urgency of work created on location, installations that are temporary and not wholly repeatable. But the title also connotes that not only the artists, but the viewers as well, are on the spot here.

Each of the four projects--by Yolanda Lopez, Gronk, Felipe Ehrenberg and Esther Parada--call upon us to answer for the disturbing state of the world portrayed within. Each scrutinizes the American predilection for possession and power--its personal, political and ethical implications, as well as its dangers and absurdities.

Lopez, a Los Angeles artist, teacher and art administrator, invites us to enter the imagination of her 8-year-old son, Rio. Framing the entrance to her untitled installation is a selection of the boy’s drawings and a painted portrait of him naked and innocent, both mounted against panels of military camouflage fabric. They set the tone for what we find in the next room, which is furnished like a young boy’s bedroom.

Rio’s drawings, in painted versions greatly enlarged and enhanced by Lopez, cover the walls, their violent imagery made overwhelming in this monumental scale. In Rio’s eyes, earth, sea and sky are all arenas of conflict. Dominating the round curve of the planet, an oversize monster spits fire at its victims. Missiles fly among the monsters in the deep blue bedlam of space. In the adjacent beach scene, sea creatures crowd in on playful surfers, threatening their security with razor-sharp fangs. Amid toy tanks, two sets of cards are scattered across the floor: a series of alphabet flashcards and a set of collecting cards that depict assassinations, atomic bombs and terrorist activities instead of sports heroes.

This encyclopedia of terror, Lopez seems to say, has become an integral part of today’s educational diet, one that breeds fear and hostility more than it nourishes. A mural of another world, a sunny, joyous place, can be seen through an imaginary paper window in one wall. This idealized world feels far from the dramatic comic book battles and “Star Wars” weaponry that adorn Rio’s room. But Lopez’s provocative and disturbing installation makes it clear which scene is the more realistic.

A two-wall painting by Gronk, a muralist and public performance artist in Los Angeles, presents a similarly disconcerting vision of the world. On the shorter wall of “Hiroshima Mon Amor, Too,” he paints a monochrome image of a bound figure being burned at the stake. With a simple bone appearing in place of its head, the victim’s persecution reads as a universal symbol of martyrdom and injustice.

A small photograph taped to this wall shows Gronk pulling aside a protective cover to reveal a chaotic scene of destruction. This scene repeats itself in the larger mural, where in a rough, graffiti-like style, Gronk paints an elegantly dressed woman standing with her back to us, holding curtains aside to view a smoking volcano. An image of a mushroom cloud appears to her left, descended upon by a bevy of burning cigarettes.

On her right are three large horizontal forms: a bone, wrapped on one end like a lollipop, another sheathed by a condom, and a toothbrush loaded with paste. Despite its boldness, the painting evades concrete interpretation. Its illogical space and incongruous combinations lend it a surreal air, and its central image of an impassive, invulnerable observer surrounded by symbols of physical, environmental and universal destruction remains haunting and poignant.

An artist, activist and writer from Mexico City, Ehrenberg combines the vocabularies of war and consumerism in his “TropiBang” installation. Computerized bar codes mingle with depictions of a romantic tropical landscape, while cardboard cutouts of men hurl through the sky as if just uprooted by an explosion.

The bar codes, together with an image of a television cameraman beneath the flashy logo of the work’s title, suggest a critique of the packaging, promotion and consumption of such battles. Though described on one wall as an “exclamation mark on low-intensity regional conflicts,” the work resembles more of a rambling notation. It introduces compelling concepts, but its haphazard design prevents them from effectively congealing.

Much more resolved and sharply focused is Parada’s “Monroe Doctrine: Theme and Variations,” an “electronic quilt” of computerized, laser-printed images and text. Expanded in scale and content since the artist’s recent residency at the Centro, the installation now covers three walls, with the 168-piece quilt of text, maps and photographs as its centerpiece.

A statement made in 1820 by the secretary of state sets the stage for the rest: “It is in our power to create a system of which we shall be the center and in which all South America will act with us.”

Throughout the work, Parada, a Chicago-based artist, teacher and writer, overlays maps of the regions in question with images of troops and additional quotations, all arguing for U.S. intervention in Latin America. By exposing the ruthlessness and crass imperialism of such doctrine, Parada underlines her own anti-interventionist stance.

Her supplementary images extend the situation to the present and show that the government’s rhetoric may have grown more subtle, but its intent hasn’t budged. A row of silhouetted soldiers, American troops sent to Honduras just last month, march in the staccato rhythm of machine gun fire across one wall toward the central work. An image of congressmen discussing aid to the Contras appears within one of the images, and maps integrated into the silhouettes mark the locations of military facilities in San Diego. Immediate and graphically striking, the work hits home as closely as it possibly can. And in doing so, it puts San Diego on the spot . . .

The show continues through April 24.