3 Artists Take Somber Look at Society

“ Al Fin del Siglo : Meditations for the Late 20th-Century,” an exhibition of work by Gwendolyn Gomez, Nanette Yannuzzi Macias and Marianne Saltiel at the Centro Cultural de la Raza, illustrates the complex nature of our times.

There is no predominant artistic style and no dominant theme. Certain issues persist, but, as we soon learn, although each artists is dealing with topical issues, each artist has her own agenda.

Gomez’s installation “Instructions for Crossing the Border” offers a new twist on a topic that has been explored by numerous San Diego artists, many of them at the Centro.

The signs in Gomez’s large pictographic drawings include daggers, dripping blood, crucifixes, highway lines, vessels, nails, tacks, kites, window bars, missiles and a thread in the eye of a needle. These are ambiguous, yet they communicate something ominous.

The maze-like setup of the installation and the twisting serpent-like dried and cracked clay object that runs along the installation floor makes this piece a large warning for those attempting to cross any kind of border.

In San Diego we are well aware of the issues of illegal immigration on the U.S.-Mexico border, but the ambiguity of the artist’s symbols reminds us that many barriers, such as racial and sexual ones, also still exist in our society, and even passing successfully over to the other side can be treacherous.

Nanette Yannuzzi Macias’s installation, “Skin: Three Stories and a Lie,” explores the large issues of modern technology, medical science and the female body from the point of view of one who is dealing with personal illness as well as sex biases.

Macia’s installation is in a separate room, cut off from the other works by a wall with a low doorway and curtains made from gauze. A television set, also wrapped in gauze, hangs from the ceiling and on either side are wooden bleachers. One hears a woman randomly counting and the haunting strains of a cello. The video screen displays close-up imagery of the hands of a cellist playing the instrument.

On the bleachers are assorted objects that include casts of the artist’s body, photographs of body parts, and inexplicable mechanical and seemingly barbaric objects of the artist’s design. One object is a propeller made from wooden forks and spoons that moves through a tank of green anti-freeze. Also included are headphones, each of which relates short personal vignettes that explain the artist’s inclusion of certain objects. For example, she talks of stairs that go nowhere and a propeller that achieves nothing.

The artist wants you to enter the installation, sit on the bleachers and wear the headphones, but the room is full of disjointed distractions, and she doesn’t make any of these activities very inviting.

The most elusive works in the show are a group of paintings by Marianne Saltiel titled “Stories from the Exiled.”

Saltiel is a painter trained in the traditional method of manipulating paint to achieve lush tones, strong highlights and rich texture. Nonetheless, her subject matter is obscure. The more one looks, the more puzzling the works become.

One untitled painting depicts a perfectly round glass object with a triangular opening at the bottom. Inside the globe are several quasi-triangular shapes. What they are is not clear: Are they moths? Is this container some kind of cocoon? Or is the artist merely playing with shapes in an abstract fashion?

A catalogue with a series of essays about the show contains one by Aida Mancillas that claims that these paintings are metaphors for power struggle and that they address feelings of loss, displacement and alienation. In fact, the ambiguous shapes don’t appear to portray such feelings. For example, it could be argued that the triangular shapes in the painting discussed here are sheltered by the globe, and it looks as if they could leave anytime they want. They do not appear to be restrained.

What the works do elicit--as is true of all of the works in this show--is a strange feeling of unfamiliarity, of existing in a world where there are no answers.

* “Al Fin del Siglo: Meditations for the Late 20th Century” continues at the Centro Cultural de la Raza through May 17. Gallery hours are noon-5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. The Centro is located in Balboa Park on Park Boulevard. For Information call 235-6135.

Everything in Mary Lovelace O’Neal’s current exhibition “Paintings and Works on Paper” at the Porter Randall Gallery has to do with the desert. All of the large canvases are titled “Two Deserts-Three Winters” and the monotypes are titled “Desert Women Series.”

The works were inspired by a nine month trip the artist took in 1989, which began in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile and ended in the Sahara Desert in Northern Africa. Because Chile and Africa are on opposite sides of the Equator, the artist was in both deserts during the winter. The title’s third winter refers to a trip she took to Morocco in 1984.

While on these various expeditions O’Neal became fascinated with the women who live in these regions. To her, they were mysterious creatures hidden by layers of clothing who seemed to appear and disappear quite suddenly on the horizon.

She was also intrigued by the desert’s rich color combinations produced by foliage and mineral deposits.

O’Neal, an associate professor of art at UC Berkeley, gathered her perceptions and then let them burst forth onto the canvas. An abstract Expressionist of the highest order, the artist gave free reign to both color and brushwork. The strongest works in the show are the large canvases, each approximately 7 by 12 feet, that are the most abstract. One of these, on the front wall of the gallery, is filled with bright pink, deep orange, pale pink, aquamarine and sea green hues that seems to shimmer. In the upper region are black strokes that could represent one of these enigmatic women.

Another large work in the back gallery utilizes the vibrant colors of the desert, but addresses an aspect of the women she observed in these desert regions. As she explained in an interview, on several occasions she would meet someone who, in the privacy of a room and the camaraderie of just women, would remove layers of clothing to reveal a mini-skirt or lingerie. In the lower half of this canvas, which is filled with bright red, orange-red, cream, blue and black, is the collage contour of a high heel cut from paper.

Equally successful are O’Neal’s colorful monotypes, which are slightly more realistic because they portray the outlines of figures. One senses the heat of the desert and can almost discern the fruits and vegetables resting in baskets.

When O’Neal is too literal however, the message becomes stilted. In a few of the large canvases she included a massive realistic figure in the center whose arms are outstretched in an embracing manner. The artist said this is mean to be a metaphor for the expansiveness of the desert and a symbol of what, to her, is the bridging of Chile and Africa.

The stiffness and unnatural pose of the figure is at odds with the expressive nature of the rest of the painting. One wonders why the artist felt a need to incorporate such literal detail, as her vibrant colors and powerful strokes already capture not only the intensity of the desert but also communicate the mystery of these cultures.

* “Paintings and Works on Paper” by Mary Lovelace O’Neal at the Porter Randall Gallery through May 29. Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.