Global Give-and-Take Rules ‘Empire’ at Chapman Gallery

Richard Turner’s life and art were indelibly influenced by his youth in the Far East.

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Raised in Michigan, the artist-curator-art professor went to high school in the early ‘60s in Vietnam, where his father, who directed Michigan State University’s police-training program, was sent as part of the U.S. government’s economic aid efforts. Turner went on to study art in Taiwan and later in India.

He’s been back in the United States since 1970, but the lasting impact of his early travels, which has guided much of his artwork as an adult, resurfaces again with “Issues of Empire,” a group exhibition he’s curated. It opens Monday at Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery, which Turner directs.

“My first grand enthusiasm for art occurred in high school in Vietnam,” says Turner, 51, and “one theme I’ve worked with (as an artist and curator) since then has been the meeting of Eastern and Western cultures and the mutual influence of those two. In putting together this show, I was looking for artists working in a similar vein.”

The mixed-media exhibit, composed of large, boldly colored work, takes a stance against imperialism exerted by North American and European cultures and their “domination” of Third World countries, said Turner, who teaches art history at Chapman, in a recent interview at the gallery.

Works are by artists from California, New York, Canada and Belgium, including Alfredo Jaar, Deborah Small, Jean Lowe, Connie Samaras, Kim MacConnell, Bauchi Zhang, Dominique Blain, Enrique Chagoya, Karen Atkinson and Wim Delvoye.

When one culture “meets” another, Turner said, cross-fertilization is inevitable, “regardless of how unbalanced that meeting is.” Such interactions between cultures provide the central theme in “Issues of Empire.”

“Empire / Ecstacy” (1990) by Small of San Diego, deals with such an “unbalanced” meeting. At issue is the clash of two polemic views of California’s missions: The romanticized view, Small says, is that the visionary Spanish padres “were wonderful, benevolent people who brought civilization” to the state.

The antithetical view, Small said in a phone interview, holds that “the indigenous people had Christianity foisted upon them, that punitive expeditions were held to recapture people . . . who were trying to escape all the time” and that indigenous peoples were enslaved, raped and slaughtered by the missionaries.

Small’s piece, part of a larger body of work she created in San Diego in 1989, is a grid composed of 13-by-13-inch wall panels of text and images. It is a “revision of history,” she said, which poses questions about such figures as Junipero Serra, who in 1769 founded California’s first mission, the Mission de Alcala.

One multiple-choice question asks whether Serra, who was beatified in 1988 as one step along the Catholic Church’s path toward sainthood, was a “devout padre,” a “saintly monk,” a “visionary man” or a “Spanish Inquisition commissioner.” The answer, Small said, is all of the above.

Kim MacConnell of San Diego also exhibits material from a larger project, this one called “Stairway of the Ancients,” which he conceived in Tijuana last year. It dealt with the cultural cross-pollination between the United States and Mexico.

Here, his work includes two-foot-tall concrete sculptures modeled on the plaster figurines sold roadside along the Tijuana border: an Aztec goddess, a Mayan dog, a basset hound and that mega-popular prime-time brat and American icon for the ‘90s, Bart Simpson.

“Stairway of the Ancients” explored “how the border acts as a give-and-take between cultures,” MacConnell said by phone. In Tijuana, the figurines are traded back and forth. Most are bought by Americans, but some are bought by Mexicans, and some of those are pieces (representing American culture) like Bart Simpson, so trans-pollination is going on.”

A cultural “degradation” of these icons is shared by all, he added, in that both nations’ vaunted symbols, be they goddesses or animated TV stars, are made of cheap plaster.

European cultural imperialism is taken up by Davis artist Zhang, who was born and raised in China but has lived in the United States since 1986.

His piece “Mozart and Me” (1993) consists of two separate images: his inches-tall self-portrait, which faces a massive, ornate portrait of Mozart. It’s a metaphor, he said, for his conflicting feelings, as a non-Westerner, of attraction to and intimidation by Western “art and civilization,” which he feels is “forced upon” him and others around the world. “Oriental Complex,” a lecture he once delivered, further explains it, he said.

“My talk was about the increasing contact between East and West,” said Zhang, “which has created a kind of anxiety on Chinese peoples’ part, the conflict between our fear of Western power and Chinese pride, and between the fascination with Western civilization and the desire to preserve our own tradition. There’s always this conflict, and it is intensified and becomes more confrontational as more Chinese immigrants come to the West.”

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Turner, whose previous East-meets-West exhibition, “If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!” was shown in 1994 at the South Bay Contemporary Museum of Art II in Long Beach, acknowledges that critics might call his latest effort passe. A flurry of such displays came and went with the 1992 quincentennial of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas.

But to him, the topic remains relevant to daily life on the multicultural Pacific Rim and the Asian art-history courses he teaches.

“Asian art history is a story of one culture constantly influencing another,” he said. “For instance, Buddhism began in India and spread throughout China to Japan; the art and culture of Thailand influenced the culture of next-door Burma.”

Besides, he added with a smile, “I don’t care” what others think. “I’d just have to say it’s a lifelong interest of mine.”

* “Issues of Empire,” a group exhibit curated by Chapman University art history professor Richard Turner, runs Monday through March 8 at Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, 333 N. Glassell Ave., Orange. Hours are Monday through Friday, noon to 5 p.m.; Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free. (714) 997-6729.