Enigmatic Explorations

Michael Dvortcsak is a masterful painter who deals with things on many levels, searching for abstract truths, encounters with art history, and, not incidentally, the hard facts about real objects. Whatever the cerebral aspects of his work, his paintings dazzle the eye and senses, provoking thought along the way.

What more can painting offer? The artist articulates his own view about painting in his statement: “As a painter, I am engaged in the process of inquiry. My painter’s questions become graphic validations of the sanctity of mystery.” In other words, he’s an inveterate searcher, whose paintings, an ample supply of which currently hang in the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard, raise as many questions as they answer. And the painter himself resists the comfort of having an established, unbending style.

Although Dvortcsak has lived in Ojai for several years, he mainly shows his work in other locales and his presence in the area’s art scene has been limited, until recently. A painting popped up in a group show at the Ventura County Museum of History and Art, and a fine show of his work appeared at the Manne Gallery in Santa Barbara a few months back. But the larger show at the Carnegie amounts to something of a homecoming, or a coming-out event, in terms of an official Ventura County exhibition. Simultaneously, he also has a show in Los Angeles at the Jan Baum Gallery.

The work at the Carnegie spans the last few years, during which time he has created rigorously painted, deceptively simple images often depicting vessels and figures, which touch on art history and make cross-references with one another. “Venus,” a sensuous vessel, bathed in enigmatic light, and “Torso and Goddess,” a vessel of pear-shaped elegance and a more angular, primitive-looking torso, both explore figurative life beyond the figure.

Rough, dabbed brushwork energizes the mysterious scene in “Mulibrioro,” depicting a tall stone set into a natural archway. As he has before in his art, Dvortcsak again deals with the metaphorical intrigue of caves and natural portals.

Downstairs in the gallery, Dvortcsak’s unique approach to landscape painting charges the air. These are magical landscapes, not quite connecting with the Earth as we may know it, but investigating both the truth and the tradition of landscape painting.

He tips us off to that self-conscious approach in his title “Imaginary View,” with the elements of rock, water and clouds in slightly surreal interrelationships. “Summiagiore,” a commanding presence that consumes one far wall of the gallery, portrays a huge, monolithic arch rising out of a body of water and rejoining it. The image hints at a religious vision, an epiphany.

And then, coming from an almost straightforward landscape perspective, we find his 1996 painting, “Momento Rosado,” one of the more memorable paintings on view. The elements of traditional landscape are all in place--a wide plain, mountains and buttes in the distance. However familiar the pieces of the scene are, though, something mythical this way comes. Dvortcsak’s strange, selective dispersal of light and the careful blend of the ambiguous and the palpable lends a beguiling tension and dreaminess to the image. Those same qualities, carefully-wrought tension and dream logic, account for much of the poetry of Dvortcsak’s painting.

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Hollywood or Busts: For something completely different, check out the latest installation of photographs by the late, great Hollywood portraitist pulled up from the museum’s impressive Hurrell collection. The show titled “Hollywood in Bobby Socks” is a historical cross-section featuring the likes of Jane Wyman and Raquel Welch. It even dates back to Jean Harlow, seen as a reclining vamp, her flowing dress flowing right off the couch.

Part of Hurrell’s gift was his rare ability to perpetrate the Hollywood mythology, while also deflating it. All the while, he exhibited an impeccable craftsmanship, creating artful portraits in the service of hype.

Sometimes, Hurrell’s shots puncture star pretensions in spite of themselves. Marion Davies, Hearst’s pampered flame, tries to look sultry and detached by gazing distractedly away, but instead looks like she’s in a police line-up. Greta Garbo, on the other hand, appears untouchably elegant, Walter Huston is lost in contemplation, and Deborah Kerr exudes natural allure. Hollywood lore: Sniff haughtily if you must, but you’ve gotta’ love it.

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Local Goods: In the “Masters in Our Midst” gallery, the current artist is printmaker Chuy c/s, a Santa Paula-born local who has worked with the legendary East Los Angeles art center known as Self-Help Graphics. The center (whose founder, Sister Karen Boccalero, passed away two weeks ago) has helped launch such notable artists as Frank Romero, who has shown at the Carnegie, and Carlos Amaraz. Chuy’s work celebrates Mexican and Chicano culture, depicting the skeletal flourish of “Dia de los Muertos” imagery and low-riders, all in a vivid, festive style. In “Las Palmeras Cantina,” a reveler is seen propping up a lamppost, and in another piece, a mariachi band’s colorful sonorities are translated into bustling visuals. He seems to be creating a neo-folkloric sensibility with this work, dealing with culture in our own backyard.

BE THERE

Michael Dvortcsak, “Hollywood in Bobby Socks,” and Chuy c/s, through July 27 at the Carnegie Art Museum, 424 South C St., Oxnard. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Thursday-Saturday., 1-5 p.m., Sunday; 385-8157.