Format Undermines Sincerity of ‘Spirit’

It’s understandable that an artist dealing with an intensely personal cultural theme may want to make the most outspoken and physically imposing statement possible. But splashier and bigger is not necessarily better, particularly when passionate belief is packaged in a tired format.

Unfortunately, most of the sculptural and installation work in “Ceremony of Spirit: Nature and Memory in Contemporary Latino Art,” at the Fullerton Museum Center through Sunday, falls into that trap. The second in a series of four exhibitions organized by the Mexican Museum in San Francisco to explore the art of the Americas, this show was curated by artist and cultural critic Amalia Mesa-Bains.

The amorphous theme of “Ceremony,” as stated by Mesa-Bains, is the role of memory in coming to terms with colonial oppression and its aftermath in contemporary life. Doesn’t all thoughtful art involve cultural memory? And doesn’t cultural awareness necessarily involve a balance between history and present-day life?

Although the 16 artists all live in the United States, their Latin American backgrounds range from Mexico to Chile and Puerto Rico, and their Third World sympathies extend (in the work of Josely Carvelho) to death and destruction in Iraq and Yugoslavia.

Essays in the accompanying catalog attempt to situate each work in its sometimes arcane cultural and historical context, a process made more off-putting than necessary by leaden, jargon-heavy prose.

The issues and moods in this work are diverse, ranging from spiritual celebration (Arturo Lindsay’s shrine to a Yoruba-Cuban deity, “Homenaje a Obatala”) to mourning for the victims of political uprising (Ismael Frigerio’s salt-bed graveyard, “Nature Our Neverending Witness Series: Atacama,” linking the Chilean industrial landscape with the assassination of miners at the turn of the century and victims of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship).

But no matter how worthy the driving force behind the art, a viewer’s primary experience must come from the works themselves, and they are largely disappointing.

The artists tend to undermine their sincerity with dated or overexposed styles and working methods--from faux primitivism to neo-Expressionism and an overreliance on documentary photos.

In Cesar A. Martinez’s retablo-style painting, “A Popular Canonization (Don Pedrito Jaramillo),” the image of a locally renowned south Texas healer is superimposed over a collage landscape augmented with images of burning candles. Everything hinges on the viewer knowing who Jaramillo is, however; otherwise a vision of ecological healing simply looks like a decorative tribute to folklore and religion.

While many of the artists invoke elements of ritual--by its nature a viscerally involving event--the results too often seem contrived and hollow.

Instead of evoking--as the catalog would have it--an allegory of nature and the spirit world--Frank Lopez-Montynk’s installation, “Tree Limb Triangulation,” looks like a lame homage to Italo Scanga and early Laddie John Dill.

Alvaro Garcia attempts to get around the dilemmas involved with latter-day ritual invention by using unlikely materials. His pieces are vintage painted metal architectural trimmings rescued from abandoned buildings, objects reflecting a way of life that is no longer valued.

A couple of these fragments are titled after their resemblance to altars, in ironic contrast to their castoff status. But trying to recover the past through old objects with romantic associations is too easy and familiar a gesture.

The central conceit of Ester Hernandez’s painting, “Tejido de los desaparecidos” (Weaving of the Disappeared), works well. It’s a black-and-white painted canvas patterned to imitate a woven cloth in which tiny white skulls pepper black stripes, alternating with images of human figures and trees.

The piece honors would-be escapees from poverty and political oppression who died attempting to reach the United States and whose bodies were never recovered by their loved ones. The imagery of weaving invokes the women left at home, whose handiwork cannot even serve as a shroud for the dead.

But in a miscalculation characteristic of this show, the understated quality of Hernandez’s painting is undercut by overly literal splashes of “blood.”

Nuance is not Patssi Valdez’s strong point either, but her art does have a clarion visual immediacy. Unburdened by the didacticism that deadens so much of this show, her painting, “House of the Spirits,” presents a lush red interior charged with visible force fields on the floor that send a table and chairs into an airborne dance.

Valdez offers a vividly energized, gently humorous image of the Latino belief in supernatural forces permeating everyday life; by demonstrating the idea instead of preaching it, she coaxes a visceral response.

* “Ceremony of Spirit: Nature and Memory in Contemporary Latino Art” through Sunday, Fullerton Museum Center, 301 N. Pomona Ave. Noon to 4 p.m. Wednesday and Friday-Sunday; noon to 8 p.m. Thursday. $3 general, $2 students ($2 for seniors on Wednesdays), free for children under 12 and for everyone from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursdays. (714) 738-6545.