Art Outlook Includes Insights From All Angles

Art highlights, in chronological order:

* “Work/Space: Visual Relations Incorporate,” UC Irvine Art Gallery (Jan. 15-Feb. 8). Artists look at corporate culture in the ‘90s, dealing with issues of power, sex, capital and the vision thing. Guest curators: Catherine Greenblatt and Stepanie Ellis.

* “Joe Goode,” Orange County Museum of Art/Newport Beach (Jan. 25-April 13). A 25-year survey of paintings by the Southern California artist known for his personal mixture of Pop art and color field painting.

* “Unbuilt Southern California,” Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, Orange (Feb. 5-March 5.) Models, drawings and other documentation of public art projects that were designed but never built. Curated by gallery director Richard Turner. (Announced last year but postponed.)

* “Shelter (Phase VII),” Huntington Beach Art Center (Feb. 22-May 4.) A multi-sensory environment, incorporating installation and performance, by Los Angeles artist Rika Ohara.

* “Should a Beatnik Drink a Martini?” Huntington Beach Art Center (Feb. 22-May 4.) Ten years’ worth of sculpture, paintings and drawings by Richard Turner, director of the Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University. His art reflects his travels in Asia and interests in literature, architecture, gardens and pop culture.

* “Composite Persona,” Fullerton Museum Center (April 5-May 25). Contemporary portraiture viewed through a sociological and psychological lens. With works from artists using both traditional and new media, including Catherine Opie, Lyle Ashton Harris and Guillermo Gomez-Pena. (Curators: Lynn LaBate of the FMC and Tina Yapelli, director of the University Art Gallery at San Diego.)

* “American Dining: California’s Role,” Fullerton Museum Center (June 14-Sept. 21). Examining restaurant history in the U.S., with an emphasis on how California’s restaurants and chefs--from McDonald’s to Alice Water’s Chez Panisse in Berkeley--have influenced the national cuisine. (Curator: Lynn LaBate.)

* “American Still Life 1915-1995: Selections From the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” OCMA/Newport Beach (June 20-Aug. 17). Sixty-six still-life paintings, selected by William S. Lieberman, chairman of the 20th century art department at the Met.

* “Mark Rothko: The Spirit of Myth, Early Paintings From the 1930s and 1940s,” OCMA/Laguna Art Museum (June 28-Sept. 7). Twenty-four works by the painter who would later develop his trademark style of luminous color fields. Loaned by the National Gallery of Art, these early paintings include expressionistic landscapes, still life, figure studies and portraits.

* “Are We Touched? The Forbidden Knowledge of Outer Space” Huntington Beach Art Center, (July 27-Sept. 21). A group exhibition exploring the ways we graft our fears and hopes on notions of outer space. With contributions from folk and trained artists, scientists, “ufologists,” the media and cultural theorists.

* “Notions of the 19th Century,” Huntington Beach Art Center (Oct. 4-Nov. 16). Contemporary artists whose work relates to or is inspired by such 19th century social and philosophical concerns as the sublime, romanticism and the notion of genius. (Meg Linton, guest curator.)

* “Williamsburg, Brooklyn,” Main Art Gallery, Cal State Fullerton (opening in November). The art, history and culture of a historic area of the New York borough, now the home of a thriving art scene, with thousands of resident visual, performing and literary artists of diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds.