ART REVIEWS : Chemistry but Few Sparks

Despite the potent chemistry of its theme--the marriage of art and architecture--Carlsbad’s annual temporary public art exhibition fails to give off many sparks.

All six works in the show at Stagecoach Park slide toward the fringes, away from the rich interplay of form and function, toward the extremes of being either obvious or esoteric.

Kathleen Stoughton, director of the San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery, served as guest juror for the show this year. Her commentary in a printed supplement to the Carlsbad Journal reinforces the promising qualities of the show’s theme, but fails to redeem any of the individual works.

The exhibition, “Art and Architecture: Crossing the Boundaries,” she writes, “. . . aims to illustrate that “public art should not operate as a passive space-filling device.” . . . It “has a responsibility to communicate to its audience: Ideally it should develop our awareness of the architectural, environmental, and social context within which the work is placed.”

How these ideas translate into actual form is another, less satisfying matter. On behalf of the Carlsbad Arts Commission, Stoughton commissioned six works by local architects who are also artists, or teams of architects and artists.

Several of the results are surprisingly facile. Randy Dalrymple and Todd Rinehart began with the premise that sitting on rocks is enjoyable, but uncomfortable. They constructed several artificial boulders, filled their hollow centers with soft turf and installed them along Stagecoach Park’s nearly dry creekbed. Whether mounted on sturdy, springy coils or placed directly on the ground, these “Rock Seeds” look silly and inconsequential.

Barry Bell’s “Tire Obelisk” yields more interpretive possibilities, but the British sculptor Tony Cragg has already mined those same possibilities with similar, more interesting forms.

Tom Grondona’s huge wooden lunch box, designed to be entered, was locked shut on a recent weekday and had none of the whimsical charm promised by his proposal. Instead, it looked like a charred, church-like structure, ominous and forbidding. Manuel Oncina’s “Sachlichkeit,” an open pavilion of corrugated metal and plastic walls, has far more appeal. Its clean geometry of right angles approaches pure sculpture, but as its title (the German word for objectivity) suggests, it is entirely devoid of human emotion.

The two strongest works in the show are also the least conspicuous. “Passage,” by Rob Quigley, Jim Gates and Teddy Cruz, is simply a steel door frame that straddles the park’s creekbed. It stands at the boundary between the park’s landscaped terrain and the natural brush of the adjacent canyon. The words “No Exit” appear across the top of the threshold, a warning not to leave the safe, artificial, controlled environment of the park. Yet the door frame is open, and it frames the wild, untamed growth beyond as an inviting, seductive mystery. This push-pull dynamic is a vital rephrasing of the age-old tension between nature and culture.

Leslie Ryan and James Brown’s “Movement/Measure” announces itself spontaneously, in the casually scripted stream of text painted on the park’s walkway. The text, from Dr. Seuss’ classic children’s book, “The Cat in the Hat,” winds and wiggles its way through the park as part of the work’s game-like course. To experience the rest of the course and encounter its various markers, participants must check out a compass and rules, both available at the park’s gymnasium. A small sign describes the process, but most park visitors will know the work only through the engaging, playful snake of text, which is probably enough.

The works in this show, Carlsbad’s fourth annual display of public art, turn out to be hybrids--part art, part architecture, but far less than the sum of their parts.

“Art and Architecture: Crossing the Boundaries” remains on view at Stagecoach Park, 3420 Camino de los Coches, Carlsbad, through Jan. 1.