Reser Rephrases Questions Through Clever Acrobatics

Fresh from the master-of-fine-arts program at UC San Diego, Greg Reser has wasted no time diving straight into the dense center of contemporary art discourse.

In eight recent paintings now at the Dietrich Jenny Gallery (660 9th Ave.), Reser challenges the legendary status of the artist as visionary, disrupts whatever sanctity remained of the picture plane--either as flat surface or window on the world--and points self-consciously to the context in which his own work is shown.

Distinguishing himself, however, from the flock of current artists who approach the issues of originality and representation with disdain and cynicism, Reser adopts a tone of spirited curiosity. His clever acrobatics in canvas and paint continually rephrase significant questions rather than drone out pat answers, a strategy that has been sucking the life out of much contemporary art.

For most of the works in this show, Reser uses a continuous length of canvas to cover two conventional rectangular frames and form an unstretched span between them. He paints across the entire, irregular surface, combining excerpts in the style of the 19th-Century atmospheric landscape painter George Inness with areas of flat, vibrant color and small illustrations of a camping tent.

As in his earlier work, which recycled advertising images and the imagery of other American painters, Reser plays the role of post-modern artist as shopper, piecing together an identity from the limitless available options already defined by others.

By zeroing in on the mystical, romantic work of Inness (most explicitly in “Inness and Out”) and reproducing it with convincing facility, Reser acknowledges the traditional role of artist as solitary genius, a concept reinforced, perhaps, by the recurring image of the tent, a symbol of isolation, independence and self-sufficiency.

But, as tempted as he may be by the seductive beauty of both Inness’ paintings and his life style, “Inescapable” describes the pull of such forces. Reser suggests that there is no going back. The lessons of this century have demystified painting. Artists hardly attempt to transcend reality these days; scrutinizing and dissecting it find much more favor.

Critical pokes at the art world and the commodity status of art are also all in vogue, and Reser offers his own ironic twist on the situation in “Innocent.” Here, a painting of empty, spotlighted walls competes with and actually overruns an image of a sublime, golden landscape. One cannot create art with the same sense of innocence that once was possible, Reser implies. Now, consciousness of a work’s context supersedes all other concerns, and sterile gallery walls are filled with paintings of sterile gallery walls. . . .

Reser identifies a range of crucial issues in his work, but never suffocates the viewer with seriousness. By exposing his confused allegiances with such refreshing wit and irreverence, Reser provokes us to ponder our own, and to re-examine our expectations of art and artists.

The show continues through July 2.

Terri Engel makes pretensions to profound mysteries in her paintings of vaporous fields. Their bulbous, sinuous and spiky forms flow into one another in a continuous web, alluding to botanical, biological and even psychic phenomena.

Arizona-based Engel, exhibiting through tomorrow at the Oneiros Gallery (711 8th Ave.), roots herself in the surrealist tradition, following Gordon Onslow Ford in his probe of “the spaces of mind which are the spaces of the universe.”

Although her work bears some resemblance to Onslow Ford’s poured paintings and the abstractions of Arshile Gorky, Engel does a disservice to their legacy of automatism with her fussy, meticulous brushwork.

Her cloying, candy-colored palette and silly, bug-eyed creatures align her more to the base tradition of science fiction illustration than the free, mental meanderings of surrealism.

In pastel, Engel breaks out of this bind, broadening her palette and aspiring to less grandiose visions. Here, pods, tendrils, wisps and folds suggest life forces in general as they swarm across the drawings, keyed to the themes of birth, growth and pulsating energy.

“Between Midnight and Dawn” features a pair of howling blue wolves, beckoning a rising, red, birdlike sun amid a fluid rhythm of surrounding forms. In “Birth of a Mermaid,” Engel introduces a familiar, human presence through a pair of white cutout gloves that penetrate the ambiguous space and shape a mystery.

More intimate and engaging than the stiff clarity of her works on oil, Engel’s pastels offer eloquent glimpses into a free-floating world of organic, sexual and psychic forces.