Strange Bits of Truth in Colin Cook Photographs

Colin Cook’s self-portrait photographs at the Four Door Gallery are the work of a wise guy with a master’s in fine arts (in this case, from UCLA) who is chock-full of generational irony about photography and snap judgments about contemporary culture.

He poses outdoors in a red bodysuit, with blue sky showing through his chest (“Don’t Worry, It’s Only Make-Believe”). Burdened by shortened, deformed limbs terminating in red claws, he flashes a survivor’s smile (“Snapshot by the Pool: Sculptural Dilemma: The Face of Adversity”). A vaguely passport-sized mug shot is titled “Foreigner (Self-Portrait With Mustache).”

It’s hardly news that we tend to believe the truth-telling mission of photographs, nervously expect disabled people to be cheerful and heroic (i.e., not at all like us) and instinctively retain hoary stereotypes about appearances. But Cook’s throwaway pieces bring such behaviors to a sort of late night TV level of reductio ad absurdum.

* “Colin Cook: Reinventing the Ludicrous,” at the Four Door Gallery, 204 N. Broadway, second floor, Santa Ana. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. Free. (714) 667-0696.