‘Civilians’ Exhibits a Sense of Humor

The show opening Saturday at the downtown exhibition space of the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art reveals a sense of humor in its social commentary.

Hanging from a chrome frame in one corner of the gallery at 838 G St. is a pair of ears placed, as if on a head, along a strip of wood. Titled “Eavesdropping,” the sculpture by Casey McLoughlin takes a quirky look at the decline of privacy in modern life.

Likewise, octogenarian artist Harry Sternberg injects humor into his look at the difficulty of rendering justice in our society, in an acrylic painting titled “Justice.” Here, several judges--one of them wearing green shades and praying--sit on floating beds of ice being melted by the sun.

Russell Forrester satirizes a TV-dominated world in his miniature, three-dimensional houses, whose interiors form tunnels leading to wall-size tubes showing nothing but static.

The works are part of “Civilians,” a 13-artist show organized by Dave Hickey, a writer and art critic who recently relocated to San Diego. Hickey named the show for the artists, all of whom operate privately rather than through such traditional channels as museums and universities.

“Civilians,” Hickey wrote in a statement for the show, are people who define themselves in terms of their own vision and personal endeavors rather than by their rank and role in society.

“I’m a free-lance writer, which means I’m a civilian,” said Hickey, 47, while overseeing the placement of the works this week. “My idea was basically to meet others of my kind.”

Those others were hard to find when Hickey moved from Texas 10 months ago.

“It occurred to me that the cultural life in San Diego is very institutionalized” by museums and universities, he said. “People who don’t work in and around these places are missing or presumed dead.”

His solution was a long chain of phone calls in which he asked people he knew in the art community to tell him about the little-known artists of San Diego. His networking turned up a number of artists, some of whom were doing the kind of work he sought.

“Once they decided I wasn’t trying to sell them encyclopedias, they were very receptive,” he said.

That receptivity allowed Hickey to put together the show of paintings, sculpture, drawings and prints within about a month.

Other local artists whose works will be shown are Michele Burgess, Hans Feuerhahn, Eugenie Geb, Robert Ginder, Li Huai, Jay Johnson, Dan Masters, DeLoss McGraw, Carl Peck and Salvador Torres.

About half of the artists do not show their work regularly, Hickey said. Several are “older” artists, a group he says is often neglected by the art world.

Hickey says their work is linked by its consciousness of the city .

“I don’t think San Diego is very happy with being an urban place,” he said.