Finishing Touch Is Missing at ‘Collector’s Eye’

“The Collector’s Eye” at Mesa College Art Gallery is a handsome show whose flaws are more implicit than explicit. Billed as a selection of contemporary American and European prints from San Diego collections, the show actually contains only a few works from the past decade. Most date from the 1960s and 1970s, which not only stretches the term “contemporary” but leads to more probing questions that remain unanswered in either the show’s extensive wall labels or its small accompanying brochure.

For starters, why the concentration on prints from pop and minimal schools? Many are quite familiar, to the point of becoming generic emblems of a generation of American art: Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup can, Frank Stella’s protractor-striped patterns, Edward Ruscha’s vision of a Standard filling station, Ellsworth Kelly’s stark geometric shapes.

Linda Royster Cook, a student in Mesa’s Museum Studies Program, selected the work with gallery director Kathleen Stoughton after studying the history of printmaking and identifying artists she felt were seminal to its development. Her essay in the exhibition brochure (which does not include a checklist of works in the show) outlines this history but does not relate it directly to the works on view. One obvious link left unexplored is that between the so-called democratic medium of printmaking and pop art’s lifting of images from mainstream culture. Medium and message shared a certain affinity during this period, but that relationship gets no comment in the show, as if it were mere coincidence.

That neglected thesis turns out to be one of the only surprises in the show, for the Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, David Hockney, Sam Francis and Robert Motherwell prints prompt little more than a blink of acknowledgment. Rich ideas and idiosyncratic visions show up in small number here, in Mark Tobey’s wonderfully squirming field of calligraphic line, or Italo Scanga’s ode to the humble shovel.

Mimmo Paladino’s “Muto” is startlingly alive in this context, not only for its size and texture but for its disarming union of German Expressionist angst and coy humor a la Jonathan Borofsky. The print, described as an etching, aquatint and sugar lift with collage, features a nude figure with black, slashing lines for ribs. He holds his hand to his mouth to enforce silence, while his own elongated black fur ears wriggle upward like alert antennae. A swampy brown and green background bears traces of a scarred landscape and fragments of other human figures.

“The Collector’s Eye” does bring to light a handful of such fine, fresh works from private and public collections and is a testament to the quality of Mesa’s Museum Studies Program. With the application of just a bit more academic rigor, the show would truly be as professional as it looks.

Mesa College Art Gallery, 7250 Mesa College Drive, through Nov. 21. Open weekdays 11 a.m.-4 p.m., Thursday evenings until 8:30.

The Los Angeles-based collaborative team of Kerr + Malley has charged the lobby/exhibition space at Sushi with the tension of political and moral battle. The installation, “Our Bodies Our Lives,” takes on the volatile theme of abortion rights without succumbing to the didactic or stooping to the sentimental. Instead, the artists have created a militant statement of concern that puts viewers in the position of combatants in a hotly contested zone.

Yellow and red plastic tape striates the entire space from floor to ceiling. The yellow tape bears the familiar warning, “Police Line Do Not Cross,” while the red tape reads, “Our Right to Decide.” Alternating with the words on the red tape is an image that seems to derive from a medical illustration, showing a child’s head in a clamp, being pulled by a man’s hand. The image clearly speaks of force, but more of forced birth, perhaps, than the termination of a pregnancy.

Rows of snapshots also stripe the gallery walls, documenting the struggle now being waged at clinics that perform abortions or offer family planning counseling. These straightforward images of protesters on both sides of the issue simply declare the terms of the debate. Some of the demonstrators hold signs reading, “My Body My Business.” Others carry placards with the words, “Be a Hero Save a Whale, Save a Baby Go to Jail.”

Kerr + Malley, the team name used by Suzy Kerr and Dianne Malley, have made this installation far less personal than another seen earlier this year in a Los Angeles gallery. There, the artists brought the abortion rights issue to the level of individual women who, before abortion was legalized, faced the dilemma of raising children within an unstable or abusive situation or taking the physical risk of an unprofessional abortion.

No such poignancy fills the air at Sushi. Rather, viewers must submit to the pounding drone of the competing voices on the plastic tapes and photographs, and from there, forge their own position.

Sushi, 852 8th Ave., through Nov. 9. Gallery hours are noon-4 p.m. Friday-Saturday and by appointment (235-8466).

CRITIC’S CHOICE: NEW WAVE OF PUBLIC ARTWORKS

A wave of new public artworks is about to sweep San Diego, and now is the time for local artists to help create a bold and distinctive effort. The projects are part of the Public Art Master Plan created by the city of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, which identified 10 communities to receive money and guidance for commissioning works. Competition guidelines for the first three sites are available from the commission (call Teresa Holm at 533-3053). There is no entry fee for participation; proposals are due Nov. 14.

The first two of several workshops to assist artists in preparing their proposals will be held Monday, from 5:30-7 p.m., and Nov. 6, from noon-1:30 p.m., in the commission’s conference room (1010 2nd Ave., Suite 555).