10 Recent Works by Artist Eric Snell Are Burnt Offerings

Self-referential art rarely gets as satisfying as Eric Snell’s. Too often its lofty, conceptual path is untraceable or, conversely, its art world in-joke is blunt and only briefly rewarding. Snell’s art, neither an esoteric whisper nor a passing pun, has an immediate clarity to it that nonetheless continues to spin meanings when given time and attention.

Ten recent works by Snell can be seen through the end of May at Mark Quint Contemporary Art (by appointment only, 454-3409). Snell’s two untitled “Chair Drawings” encapsulate his method best, for here his mode of converting reality into abstraction is quite literal. A wooden chair adhered to each of the large, black canvases appears at once to emerge, to fall forward, yet also to be sinking into the surface. Both chairs have been burned--their legs are charred stubs, their cane seats broken and brittle.

Then, the equation reveals itself, the complicity between chair and canvas becomes clear: The chair and the canvas surface are of the same matter. Snell has blackened the canvases with the burned portion of the chairs. Protruding from the canvases, the chairs appear to be still transmuting, shifting from solid, tangible, functional objects to fields of black dust--from real objects to abstract images.

Snell is, indeed, playing with fire, and the game exists on several levels. In another, untitled work, he pairs a 1-foot-square, blackened canvas with a burned yardstick hanging on a nail in the wall. The measuring stick has been burned precisely to the 12-inch mark, and in the equation of the missing foot with the foot-square canvas the symmetry of Snell’s enterprise unfolds.

As in the chair drawings, the yardstick and the canvas are made equal, and yet they remain profoundly different. One speaks the language of everyday life, of practicality and use; the other speaks in the rarefied tongue of art, a subtle, sensual, but also highly cerebral mode of communication. Do they truly meet here or does their conjunction merely underscore their differences?

Snell, from the Channel Islands, began his ongoing burnt wood drawings in 1983. He was in residence in La Jolla for much of the month of April to create work for this show, as he was in 1988 for an exhibition at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art.

The Quint show vacillates between such compelling, process-oriented works as the chair and yardstick drawings and more esoteric, minimalist imagery. While all of the canvases in the current show are rubbed black with charcoal (mixed with water and wood glue), many bear simple, “negative” silhouettes of circles, spoons and geometric shapes in the raw canvas.

Catalogue notes from another show tell us that Snell’s imagery always relates back to the shape or proportion of his drawing tool, but without the presence of the physical evidence--the wooden spoon, the yardstick--that relationship has no immediacy. The rich, sooty surfaces, scattered with wood debris, possess some visual interest in themselves, but they lose much of their intrigue when not presented in the context of a dialogue about their process of creation.

Snell’s work, at its best and most direct, stages a transmutation. A chair becomes a black square and yet somehow retains its organic integrity. A mass-produced object becomes a unique and hand-made image, and most provocative of all, a physical fact becomes a philosophical question.

ART LINES: Board members of the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art voted unanimously in their April meeting to change the museum’s name to the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. All legal changes have been made, but the transition to full use of the new name is expected to take six months.

The idea had been talked about for many years, according to Diane Maxwell, Public Relations Officer at the museum. “Our audience includes many La Jollans, but draws upon all of San Diego,” she said. “We wanted our name to connect with that geographic identity.”

The museum, which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year, is currently in the design stage of a major expansion and renovation. . . .

The Gwydion Gallery in La Jolla changed its name this week to the Rebecca Cabo Gallery. Cabo, director of the gallery for nearly three years, said the change accompanies a new focus for the gallery: women artists.

“When I look back over what I’ve done during the past three years, (shows by women artists) have been the most exciting. I was testing a lot of things, but now it’s time for more of a focus.” The gallery’s next show, featuring paintings by Los Angeles artist Susan Moss, opens Saturday, May 26.

After a six-month hiatus, the Thomas Babeor Gallery has quietly resumed its public hours. The 10-year-old gallery was open by appointment only while director Thomas Babeor spent time surveying the European art scene. Upcoming shows include prints and drawings by Cy Twombly (opening Saturday), drawings by European artists and work by young Spanish artists. Gallery hours are 10 to 5, Tuesday through Saturday.

“We’ve taken the ‘by appointment’ sign off the door and we’re ready to be public again,” said gallery associate director Patrick Barry.