ART REVIEW : ‘Newcomers’ a Showcase for 12 L.A. Artists : Art: The artists are minding their manners in Barnsdall Park exhibition, but most of them seem to share the <i> Angst </i> of the ‘80s.

“Newcomers 1990,” on view at the Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Park through Jan. 7, is a sort of debutantes’ ball for emerging artists--and, as at any ball, everyone makes a good appearance here.

Coolly assured and thoroughly professional, these artists stand poised to make the leap into the big time--and the fact that many of them simply rework and refurbish ideas and techniques that originated with other artists shouldn’t prove to be a problem. Abiding by the rules of the salon only increases one’s collectibility, and these artists clearly understand that it doesn’t pay to be outrageous or unconventional.

Selected over a two-year period from more than 1,000 portfolios reviewed by curator Marie de Alcuaz Kish, “Newcomers 1990” showcases work by 12 artists in or around their 30s who have yet to have major solo exhibitions in Los Angeles. Half are native Californians, two emigrated here from West Germany and one hails from the Virgin Islands. Kish brought a fair hand to her job as curator, and the show evidences no personal biases or central theme, nor is there any trace of regionalism in this wildly diverse show. Handsomely installed with a generous selection of work by each artist, it’s a mixed bag that includes several different modes of art-making currently considered viable.

The most notable generalization one can make about this art is that it’s remarkably disengaged. In keeping with the current trend towards cocooning, most of these artists eschew any dialogue with current events, choosing instead to retreat into private worlds of personal obsessions and symbols. Much of the work is hermetic and self-referential, and none of it is particularly joyful. A cloud of anxiety hangs over most of the art on view here.

Greeting one in the entrance gallery is Rudy Mercado’s “Battle of Washita River, Nov. 1868,” a living diorama chronicling one of the many savage battles waged in the extermination of the American Indian. Involving 800 figures, 500 horses and 75 tepees molded by the artist in non-drying clay at 5/8-inch scale, the piece is executed in six stages; each Monday the artist advances the action of the battle by reshaping the figures. It’s certainly an informative piece and quite an impressive technical feat; however, it seems as though it rightly belongs in a historical rather than an art context.

Ute Gruenwald, one of two German artists in the show, explores the theme of the harvest as a metaphor for the merging of the natural and the manufactured. Her three massive canvases on view--two aerial views of crops, one of a bubbling pot of lentils titled “Boiling Soup”--put one in mind of Anselm Kiefer; there’s an impacted, emotional density and a sweeping scale to Gruenwald’s grand landscapes that’s distinctly Kieferesque. Christel Dillbohner, also from Germany, works with multiple panels and a palette knife to create heavily impastoed images that refer to symbols and architectural elements common in her native country.

In a similar formalist vein, Steffani Bailey fashions colorfully painted geometric constructions out of oil paint on wood (they’re vaguely evocative of Frank Stella), while Jacci Den Hartog creates reductive sculptures from industrial materials. Her “Model of the Universe”--six rubber hoses suspended from the ceiling dangling black rubber balls--is like a high-tech Maypole.

Jeffrey E. Yoshimine provides the peak moments of the show with a series of harrowingly intense figure studies. Like Francis Bacon, Yoshimine interprets the human form as a bloodied battleground where emotional states are manifested in flesh. Sculpting in wax, wire and wood, he fashions freakish forms--a hand that’s grown a tiny head, a head trailing an arm like a tail--that threaten to degenerate into the realm of cheap thrills. His paintings, however, are another matter--they’re considerably more balanced and subtle. Rendering physically anguished forms in a stunningly graceful painting style, he creates images of enormous power.

Kevin Jon Boyle inhabits a similarly dark realm. Working with vine charcoal on paper, Boyle explores the terrors of childhood and the strangling protection of parental love. Set at night, usually in a sunless forest choked with vines that threaten to engulf the human figures who wander there, his large black-and-white drawings are rife with Freudian implications; any form of intimacy is invariably interpreted as being fraught with danger. In “Tunnel of Love,” for instance, a pair of lovers in a rowboat drift ever deeper into dark, devouring oblivion. We’ve all had dates like that, Kevin, and we know where you’re coming from.

Gavin Lee combines lead sculptures with palladium photographic prints (whose tones are warmer and softer than normal silver prints) to create haunting reliquaries. As in work by Christian Boltanski (who also builds shrines for his photographs), this is essentially a highly emotional form of portraiture, and Lee’s photographs--faded images of Asian men and women--are awash in a sense of loss and melancholy.

Also on view are mixed-media paintings exploring biblical themes by Margaret Kelley, dopey photo portraits shot at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire by Dennis Olanzo Callwood, a series of paintings by Anne Hutton that pay homage to modern conveniences (and exploit Ed Ruscha’s basic recipe of stenciling words on subtly painted fields), and an ambitious mixed-media installation by Michael Arata. All of these artists are ripe for the plucking, so expect to see them on the local gallery circuit soon.