In Search of . . . Originality : The Conventional Characterizes Laguna Art Institute’s Juried Show

P ssst! Want an imitation Robert Arneson ceramic sculpture? Can we do a deal on a knockoff of Jerry Uelsmann’s style? Might we interest you in a cutesy-poo variant of a Marisol?

These impostors are part of “Visual Arts ‘88,” the Art Institute of Southern California’s third annual juried exhibition of art in all media, on view at the Laguna Beach school through Aug. 31.

Among the 35 works in the show, chosen from about 300 entries from throughout California, are a few promising pieces that speak in recognizably personal voices. But despite the prestige of juror Henry Hopkins, director of the Frederick Weisman Collection in Los Angeles, the show has a wishy-washy quality that fails to suggest a strong guiding intelligence behind the selections.

Bafflingly, Hopkins includes numerous depressingly timid, bland pieces--work simply out of touch with what’s happening in art today--and a bunch of works that ape celebrated artistic styles without capturing their distinctive sensibilities. He also tosses in a few pretentiously style-conscious selections and awards the top prize to a piece that is virtually all flash and no content. It just doesn’t add up.

The Arneson clone, by Ricardo Duffy, translates Arneson’s extraordinary bust of slain San Francisco Mayor George Moscone--graffiti inscriptions and all--into a plodding, would-be ironic tribute to “The Arms Salesman,” whose broad, beaming face rises above his collar and whirling tie. The head is mounted on a column incised with dollar signs, a gun and (in case the viewer is still in the dark) the words “arms money,” “Iran-Contra” and “US Arm” (sic).

In “Day Dreamer,” the Uelsmannesque work of Steve Hunt, a view of a field is superimposed over a wall with two curtained windows. Sylvia Raz’s life-size “Red Light” is a brightly painted, oppressively perky sculpture of a pigtailed girl and her dog that is coyly assembled out of furniture parts--eons distant in meaningfulness from the social commentary of a Marisol, whose style it timidly co-opts.

Don Paglia’s watercolor “Koi Diptych” looks rather like a slick attempt at capturing the aqueous mysteries of Joseph Raffael’s paintings. Even Tim Spaulding’s careful pencil rendering of the sea, “Dana Point Wave”--which won the drawing award--brings to mind unflattering comparisons to the work of Vija Celmins.

Imitating others is a natural part of an artist’s evolution, and no one expects mature work in a juried exhibit. But choosing such derivative pieces for display confuses the issue: It puts an imprimatur on facsimiles rather than on personal (if raw) solutions to artistic problems. In this show, rawness is in woefully short supply.

Not that it lacks sensitive and original pieces. Jango, a recent UC Irvine graduate whose larger work was recently on view at the Irvine Fine Arts Center, is showing a small untitled wall piece, a wooden paddle-like object with a spare, primitivist allure.

The oval upper portion is marked by a knothole (suggestive of an all-seeing eye) and bisected by a long, thin horizontal strip of metal. Below that point, the paddle and long handle turn blood-red. At the end of the handle, metal tubes bound with wire cling like ritual artifacts of a cargo cult.

Ostergaard, who also goes by one name, has entered a pile of plump plaster pillows heaped on a white newel post. The piece is called “Razzzberry,” about as good a title as any for such an improbable and amusing gesture.

Monte Reynolds’ ”?,” a medley of burlap-yellow polka dots on a black background, is an amusingly humble addition to the deadpan patterning mania that has invaded a corner of the painting world in recent years.

Wayne Forte’s exuberant painting “Rosa” is a broadly brushed image of a dumpy nude woman whose lower torso somehow gets lost in the zooming transit from the crown of her huge yellow hat to her wide feet, which disappear into bulky high heels.

In “Christine One,” a photo collage that won the photography award, M. Laccionole pieces together a woman’s face out of a checkerboard of dark and light photo snippets. The technique is dated, but the piece radiates the integrity of an artist earnestly bent on conveying a haunting image.

Other artists seem to be trying for a sophisticated, updated look, but with a disconcertingly rudimentary and simple-minded application of conceptual art influences. It looks, in fact, as though the majority of the best-of-medium awards were bestowed out of desperation rather than as a true assessment of worth.

G.G. Genis received the sculpture award for “The Absolute Right?” an easy shot at commentary in which holy books from the world’s major non-Christian religions are piled on one side of a seesaw. The other side is weighed down by a toy TV, paper money and a Bible.

C. Gallup’s “The Notion of Table Explored” consists of a bridge table with a clear acrylic top on which photographs of bridge table frames are displayed. Trouble is, there is precious little “exploring” going on here under the stylish veneer.

Other entries are tight and careful. L. Whitsen’s “View From My Window, Scotland” is a pristine world of brightly colored, crisply shadowed shapes--a courtyard with a little doorway, a steeple, soft distant hills, tidy fields.

“Portrait of Angela” by Eric Johnson, who snagged the painting and best-of-show awards, is slick, trendy-restaurant stuff with its medley of tilted Colosseum, flying phonograph record, huge strawberry, stylized lips and a teapot blowing its top.

Other works (displayed, for the most part, in the upstairs gallery) are also particularly unimaginative: clunky still lifes, vague abstractions, creaky stabs at surrealism, bland figuration.

As is depressingly common in juried shows, the overriding problem seems to be finding a worthwhile subject and developing a fresh way of looking at it. Maybe next year’s juror will be more ruthless in imposing a strong point of view and in paring down the avalanche of entries to a truly select cluster.

“Visual Arts ‘88” remains through Aug. 31 at the Art Institute of Southern California, 2222 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. The gallery is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Fridays; 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays. Admission is free. Information: (714) 497-3309.