Complex Symbols and the Intangible in Pair of Exhibits

He calls himself a marginal man, having lived in both the Eastern and Western worlds and spliced together the temperaments of both to make his art.

Schlechter Duvall was born in Indonesia 67 years ago and now makes his home in Iowa. Last year he spent a month in Java, the first time he had been back to his native island in more than 30 years. The melange of memories and impressions stirred up by the trip inspired a series of works on paper, a selection of which is on view through Nov. 4 at Oneiros Gallery (711 8th Ave., Studio A).

“The Year I Was Born,” the name of the show and many of its works, celebrates the symbols, colors and sinuous rhythms of Indonesian culture. Faces, birds, Buddhas and other, undefinable forms mingle in the smaller, more delicate works in watercolor and colored pencil. They maintain their own boundaries only temporarily, until another, more urgent impression floats into view.

In “The Dream,” a deity and a gold-haloed phallic symbol hover in a cool, aqueous pool. In “Java Night,” a heavy curtain of shadow hangs over a golden row of dwellings, an animal-like form and a penetrating female face.

A line meanders through “Java Rhythm,” suggesting a thigh, breasts, an enticing eye. Duvall’s hand moves across the page in a free, unhurried, delectable pace, savoring the ambiguity and the sensuality of such a pure, unencumbered gesture.

The larger works, all titled “The Year I Was Born,” lack the intimacy of these smaller works. Their interlocking shapes and planes of red, black and gold feel more composed and, consequently, less revelatory.

Abstract linear and planar forms emerge in these predominantly black paintings as if from the dark pool of memory. Duvall fixes these slices from the continuous stream of amorphous, automatic imagery in his subconscious by inscribing each with the date “Nov. 1922.” Other references to the artist’s birth rarely appear, except in the fourth work in the series, which is rich in associations of awakening and passage.

Duvall’s painting technique, with its complex layers of ink, paint, pencil and occasionally wax, echoes the fine interweaving of memories and sensations, both concrete and fleeting, that motivates these works. Each surface hints at others below. Duvall is at his best when he draws back these veils to reveal personal and cultural symbols, and at his least engaging when he limits himself to a single plane, creating an opaque mosaic of color and form.

“Spirits--A Sculptural Exploration” pairs local artists Carole Robinson and Larry Dumlao, who approach the realm of the intangible from radically different directions. Their works, however, complement each other in this show at Grossmont College’s Hyde Gallery, with Robinson’s elegant, contained forms offsetting Dumlao’s rougher, more challenging installation.

Robinson refers to her free-standing copper works as symbols of the human spirit, their various gestures of curling and unfurling signifying stages “in the evolution of one’s self-perception and our inner spiritual experience.” Made of sheets of copper, curled tightly at the bottom and more loosely at the top, most of the sculptures stand 5 to 6 feet tall and assume the general bulk of a human form.

As metaphors for human conditions ranging from insularity and self-protection to a generosity of spirit, the sculptures are suggestive but not always convincing. Robinson’s most rewarding concern is with form itself, especially the contrasts in tone and texture of the interiors and exteriors of her works.

One work bears the imprint of a loose fabric weave on its aqua, patinated copper skin. One tight, conical form has a ribbon-like flap loose at the base and a wedge excised from the top, allowing a glimpse of the warm, richly burnished copper inside. The dark, pocked exterior belies the precious, smooth surface within.

Another of Robinson’s works billows out at the center with statuesque dignity, its aqua- and gray-streaked hide sheathing a core of luminous gold. Robinson has no gripe with beauty. She bestows it freely and generously, occasionally even equating the skin’s beauty with that of the soul.

Dumlao’s installation juxtaposes the organic with the artificial to comment, perhaps, on the displacement of the spiritual in contemporary urban life. A dusting of leaves settles around clusters of rocks at the installation’s entrance. On either side of this vaguely ritualistic site sit large, square plates of shiny metal, each bearing an orderly array of animal bones. These range from diminutive rodent skulls to the sturdy skeletal structure of cows. All are arranged in neat piles and rows and covered with sheets of clear plastic.

This sanitized, pseudo-scientific display protects the bones, but at the same time it denies them their natural right to meld back into the earth. Categorized, processed and publicly presented, the animal remains feel wholly divested of the life that once pulsed within them. Dumlao’s installation, though obtuse, renders this sapping of the animate or the spiritual as appropriately tragic.

The show continues through Nov. 1.