Modern Artifacts With a Power and a Mystery

The sheer presence of pyramids, obelisks, tombstones and shrines stirs the spirit and tends to stifle speech. This state of mute reverence finds a modern-day counterpart in the works of Gary Ghirardi at the Henry Vincent Gallery (428 Brookes Ave.). Like their ancient precursors, Ghirardi’s works float questions of time, permanence and transient values through the mind, directing the traffic of sensual responses.

Ghirardi, a San Diegan, works in concrete, shaping thick slabs that hug, hang on and lean against walls. Several stand like mummies, their contours suggesting human figures but their self-contained stiffness rendering them more emblematic than animate.

In others, the human figure is implied through a sparing number of curved lines incised in the concrete surface. Also embedded in these surfaces are small collages made of old cartoons and magazine advertisements. Sealed by fragments of glass that keep the smooth concrete surface continuous, these collages offer brief, chaotic glimpses into another era.

Ghirardi evokes the past less literally in the textures and tones he imposes on his works. The slabs, in washed-out green, red and standard gray, bear additional subtle pigmentations and slight implications of texture on their surfaces that suggest that all of these materials--and not just the recycled media snippets--had a previous life.

If feels as if Ghirardi has returned to excavate, after an eruption of Vesuvian proportion that buried an entire culture. Time became compressed in the process, and in Ghirardi’s exhumed chunks, outdated television ads and cartoon housewives overlap with recent newspaper references to U.S.-Soviet rivalry.

The imagery is cryptic, and Ghirardi isn’t interested in giving pat answers, but the titles of his works often steer toward thematic interpretations.

“Culture Slaves,” a row of four life-size figural slabs, are propped against one wall in obedient symmetry like the planks of John McCracken. Their positioning reeks of subservience and conformism, the effect of years of absorbing the ads that lay just beneath the concrete surface. “Conservatives” consists of two figures, this time looming larger than life in response to an embedded cartoon fragment in which Mikhail Gorbachev boasts self-defeatingly to Ronald Reagan that “My conservatives are meaner than your conservatives!”

Ghirardi buries suggestion and meaning within his works without the appearance of undue effort. The concrete seems to bear the imprint of time more than the artist’s own hand, and, in so doing, these mysterious modern artifacts have a power and presence that precludes explanation.

The show continues through May 28, by appointment only (298-2413).

The two invitational exhibitions at the Southwestern College Art Gallery (900 Otay Lakes Road) can’t be faulted for weak intentions. Both center on important and engaging premises: “The Struggle of Mankind Endangered by Borders” deals with barriers of all kinds--personal, political and physical; “Post-Arte Visual Poems” focuses on work that does away with borders between media, merging poetry with drawing, printmaking and various other visual forms.

Unfortunately, the concepts of the exhibition surpass most of the actual contents in terms of depth and resolution. Most of the artists here seem to be groping clumsily at huge themes without the deliberation necessary to give them effective form.

Issues concerning the U.S. border with Mexico prevail in “The Struggle of Mankind,” though the themes of racism and power in general are also broached, as are such dividers as freeways and pens used to confine animals bred for slaughter.

Among the most potent and powerful of the works included are those that resist a shouting match with evil and instead embody a cool sense of reserve, laying out the facts in such a way as to underscore their horrific implications.

Deborah Small’s “Atrocities Management” excels with this strategy by juxtaposing diagrammatic renderings of prisoners being tortured with such statements as “Certain things are beyond our control,” phrases used by the offenders to cushion impact and evade responsibility.

Larry Dumlao’s “La Mesa” explores aspects of citizenship and identification with an understated, personal touch. Bob Matheny, Richard Morse Allen and Michael Cuddington contribute interesting work as well, but most of the others succumb to the volatility of their subject matter, failing to channel it into more considered responses.

The “Post-Arte” show contains a selection of work from the Second International Biennial of Visual and Alternative Poetry, organized and mounted recently in Mexico City. It’s an eclectic mix that evokes shades of Dada with its predominantly irrational, collaged imagery, its rejection of traditional and costly art materials (for Xerox machines and rubber stamps) and, by extension, its democratic nature.

Artists from more than 40 countries contributed to the Biennial show, and a language barrier limits the accessibility of much of the work here for speakers only of English.

Like its neighbor, this show suffers from a scattered, undigested quality, with the exception of a few wonderfully simple and direct expressions, such as Steve Perkins’ photo-text Xerox, “Philosophy doesn’t prepare us for death. Death prepares us for philosophy,” and El Filimar’s bold treatment of the word “Chile,” in which the last letter transforms gradually into a swastika.

Both shows continue through May 13.