O.C. Art Review : ‘Issues of Empire’ Strikes Back

Just because an exhibition has a heavy-duty theme, the art doesn’t have to be dull and academic. A case in point is “Issues of Empire” at the Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, through March 9.

Gallery director Richard Turner has selected 10 artists, some much better known than others, who approach issues of colonial domination and cultural imperialism in generally fresh and visually effective ways. While several artists are intrigued by the intersection of design, cultural beliefs and trans-cultural borrowings, others comment on specific historical issues.

But the biggest differences in the works hinge on matters of tone and approach. Wry allusions and unexpected juxtapositions go a long way toward fostering the complexity and nuance that separate a work of art from a political tract.

Brash patterning serves as a background for disparate postcard images in Kim MacConnel’s canvases. A leading practitioner of Pattern Painting in the 1970s, he juxtaposes evidence of the global dominance of American values with its flip side: an “ethnic” design (big colored dots) that has been appropriated many times over by the West.

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In “Greetings From Liberia,” MacConnel offers an international stew of American mythology, from pious historical legend to a stress on technology and “progress.” The images in the painting include George Washington on horseback, a roller coaster at a Georgia amusement park, a black dancer in body paint and jogging shorts and a tacky seaside development in Liberia.

Jean Lowe’s “Post Colonial Divan” skewers the let-them-eat-cake sensibility behind bucolic representations of peasant or slave labor on expensive traditional furniture.

Her “Mean Spirited Floor Covering” displays a map of the world’s bounty--as perceived in global stereotypes. A tourist with a camera and a tea bag in a cup summarize Africa; Europe is where they have sex magazines, cheese, wine and Lipizzaner stallions. And the United States? Oh, that’s where the Beverly Hillbillies live.

William Delvoye ironically dresses natural-gas canisters in the quaint guise of Delft china: white vessels decorated with scroll-bordered blue images of Dutch windmills. By alluding to one form of “clean” technology with another, Delvoye neatly bridges distant epochs; at the same time, he suggests the portability of colonial domination and its effortless mutation into contemporary forms.

Baochi Zhang uses traditions of image-making to question his relationship--as a Chinese-born artist--to heroes of Western culture. In “Mozart and Me,” Zhang’s profiled image appears in a small oval-framed photograph, facing a large silhouette of the 18th-Century composer. Made of camouflage cloth (with a curly blond wig), the portrait combines memories of the U.S. military presence in Southeast Asia with the notion of camouflage: hiding identity within a larger cultural terrain.

Dominique Blain very simply suggests how the context of an image can change our feelings about the people portrayed in it. In “Details,” a small head shot of a black man is juxtaposed with a vintage photograph of a white man riding in a sedan chair carried by four black servants. It takes a moment to realize that the small photo is a detail from the larger one. Seen in isolation, apart from his colonial role, the man regains his dignity and identity.

Along the same lines, Alfredo Jaar’s map-and-photo piece, “Geography Equals War,” makes the bitterly ironic equation between Italy and its African empire, and one black man, seemingly “marked” (with discrete red lines) for slaughter. But whereas Blain lets the viewer draw the inference, Jaar rather ponderously spells it out.

Enrique Chagoya, who immigrated to the United States from Mexico in 1977, offers an adroit black satire of ugly American stereotypes of the “threat” of Mexican immigration. Juxtaposed with a traditional “bleeding heart” religious painting (faithful sheep lapping up Jesus’ blood), a bloody brotherhood of Mesoamericans are shown munching on human body parts and sprinkling salt on their next sacrifice: a hog-tied, sweating Mickey Mouse.

In “New Category: Abduction Experiences,” Connie Samaras satirically locates two bizarre niches of minority culture: the overwhelmingly white contingent who claim to have been abducted by aliens in UFOs, and the aliens themselves, who reflect the dominant culture’s worst fears and anxieties.

Karen Atkinson juxtaposes travel magazine writing and photography with the writings of European explorers in order to investigate the persistent coupling of the imagery of sexual conquest with inviting travel destinations. The topic is intriguing, yet the tone of “Remapping Tales of Desire”--which also includes a discursive pamphlet by Atkinson and Andrea Liss--is rigidly didactic, leaving little imaginative wiggle-room for the viewer.

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In contrast, the square panels that make up Deborah Small’s “California Mission Daze” Ping-Pong between traditional and revisionist views of the Spanish missions and their treatment of the Indians.

By juxtaposing historical and contemporary quotations, and imagery ranging from Indian tile designs to a child’s drawing of a grimacing Indian and a tomahawk-wielding Puritan, Small suggests that confusion and mindless regurgitation of distorted information is to blame for our hazy view of Spanish colonialism.

* “Issues of Empire,” at the Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, 333 N. Glassell, Orange. Hours: Noon to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Free. Through March 9. (714) 997-6729.