Show Again Demonstrates the Strength of McGraw

Although it has been featured in a scattering of shows throughout San Diego County over the past few years, the work of DeLoss McGraw has yet to receive its full due in a local venue. McGraw’s latest show, at the new Annex Gallery at the Tower in the Golden Triangle, confirms what the others have also suggested--that McGraw’s art is extraordinarily far-reaching, responding to literary, philosophical and historical sources, yet never straying far from familiar experience and fundamental human emotion.

McGraw’s work operates on several levels, from the whimsical to the wise, the playful to the profound. Ultimately, it convinces that fairy tales and philosophy are not as different as one might think, for both attempt to penetrate the human spirit and to define the motives, essences and intentions of life.

The sculptures and paintings on paper in this show collapse the distance between the playful and philosophical with searing sincerity and lingering charm. A looming, 13-foot-high wood cutout of a rabbit-headed figure from a series of Alice and Wonderland stage sets bears a quote from theorist Gaston Bachelard on its underside. “The great function of poetry is to give us back the situations of our dreams,” the quote begins.

Through both this stage set and another sculpture, “Child’s Bedroom,” McGraw, a North County resident, punctuates the vibrant painted surfaces with snippets of seemingly discordant imagery--collaged fragments of Hanukkah wrapping paper or reproductions from early Renaissance paintings. Both works evoke the montage quality of consciousness,1952998688stew that leaves its imprint on our every thought and action.

McGraw’s fresh and sprightly style derives from his use of vivid primary colors and flat, simplified silhouettes. But the whimsicality of his forms never clashes with the potency of his ideas. Instead, tickles and pain, light and heavy, punning and poignant reveal themselves to be equal, essential facets of being.

The show continues through the end of January on the ground floor of the Alan I. Kay Executive Tower (4225 Executive Square Drive). Open by appointment: 554-1263.

This year’s Artists Guild exhibition at the San Diego Museum of Art stretches further and digs deeper than usual. Instead of including work only by guild members or San Diego and Imperial County artists as in past years, the 1990 show features art in all media by artists from throughout the state. Juried by Bay Area painter Christopher Brown, the show gains a new credibility through this approach, although most of the work, as was also true in past years, still appears shamefully immature to be hanging in a museum.

The cloying, cute and easily dismissible appear here in much smaller quantities than in recent years, but the proportion of transcendent, fully absorbing works is still minute.

Frederic Wong’s “Crucifixion VII” and Liane McDonell’s “The Chart of Everything and Nothing With No Categories” are among the exceptional works in the show.

Wong’s mosaic-like collage of rectangular images reads, at a distance, as the figure of Christ on the cross. The figure’s contours, however, are formed by disparate images from popular culture, advertising and history. The arc of the Hindenburg in flames defines one of Christ’s arms and the curve of a woman’s cheek reads as part of one leg. Other images of fashion models, missiles, the Ku Klux Klan and various clouded scenes together provide a troubled vision that is vague yet provocative.

McDonell’s large pastel-and-charcoal drawing on paper mounted on canvas takes a more accusatory stance. Conservative Senator Jesse Helms is depicted here as a hostile, club-wielding judge surrounded by crying babies, convoluted figures and women in despair. Helms raises his weapon over a blank rectangle in the center of the work, captioned by the words, “As if a perfect reality will rise.”

McDonell’s tough, abrasive work draws heavily on the influence of the New York-based socially critical artist Sue Coe, but does manage to speak forcefully in its own distinct voice, mingling anger and hope.

The show continues through Jan. 13.