Santa Monica

Performance artist May Sun shows compelling mixed-media canvases that zero in on recent events in China. These photo silk screen and acrylic paintings are impeccably crafted. In works collectively called “The Ghost of Mao,” the left side of the canvas is taken up by a large photo portrait of Chairman Mao done in silver grays and blacks with light and dark relationships reversed just like a photo negative. In this size and visual context, the effect is spectral, unreal and looming. Beside Mao is a silk screened photo of Chinese youths smiling, waving, raising victorious arms in the early days of the demonstrations. Students float on an assaulting red acrylic field that reminds us of the fate they’d meet in the days to come. “The Chairman and the Colonel” juxtaposes Mao with the recognizable face of fried chicken king Colonel Sanders. Mao’s face is streaked with dripping, seductive color and Sanders’ face is covered with the circle and diagonal symbol indicating prohibition.

These images are more than Pop quotings or political art. With elegance and reserve, they touch on the complex relationship that Chinese Americans must have with their homeland. However extreme Mao’s communism, the national pride he built cannot but touch people who strain under Western labels like “Third-World minority culture.” The ultimate folly of Mao’s system, a sense of daunted promise and horror, come through very fine unstretched canvases that hang loose like Oriental scrolls or revolutionary banners. In one of these, a news photo of piled dead students peaks out from behind a printed Mao aphorism likening Chinese youth to the vibrant and promising energy of the sun. (B-1 Gallery, 2730 Main St., to Dec. 12.)