A Mixed Perspective

The newest kid on Ojai’s art gallery block is the Bagier Gallery, which opened late last year and promises to fill the town’s void for a gallery space with a contemporary focus.

The gallery, situated in what has been dubbed the Ojai Fine Arts Building on Ojai Avenue, was launched by artist-owner Robin Bagier, who has also sponsored Native American performances and art fairs in the back parking lot.

The gallery is already an important address in the Ojai art scene, just off the beaten path, in more ways than one.

The gallery’s second official show features the work of artists Ingrid Boulting and Anne Ramis, whose understated and mystical works make them complementary gallery mates. But the gallery’s actual raison d’etre may be found in the small gallery in back. Here, the work of Bagier’s noted aunt, Ely DeVescovi, is proudly displayed, along with photographs of her contemporaries and mentors--including famed Mexican artists Diego Rivera, Jose Clementes Orozco and Frida Kahlo.

DeVescovi was born in Italy in 1909 and emigrated to the United States, but wound up in Mexico, where she worked as a painter with a keen interest in murals. She has entrusted her nephew with a trove of artworks, writings and related materials, and the gallery is, in part, a headquarters for researching and representing DeVescovi’s work. He plans to rotate her artworks into the small gallery.

Currently, her passionate figure paintings may be seen in the front window, and assorted drawings, paintings and studies fill the back room.

One of the most impressive pieces is her painting, “Rain Man.” Under a rain-speckled sky, a naked man crouches over a single green leaf on a landscape dotted with tree stumps, an allegorical image of fertility struggling against exploitation.

In the large gallery, Boulting and Ramis offer their whimsical variations on the proverbial East-meets-West concept, mixing familiar American imagery with symbols of Eastern spirituality.

Boulting, born in South Africa and now living in Ojai, sometimes fills her compositions with dream-like layers, as in the large piece, “Anne’s Shadows,” with its pale and airy impressions of female figures, a dog and a garden.

At other times, the imagery is perfectly clear and comprehensible, as in “Mating Elephants,” an oddly delicate depiction of a slightly startling subject matter. Sensuality and danger meet in the visual scheme of “Lady With Tigers,” in which a woman’s face is nestled amid the animals’ stripes.

The Santa Monica-based Ramis works with a similar East-West aesthetic, but with her own twists. Her works are often lined with humor based on the odd juxtapositions of imagery, like the meeting of the deity with a glee club of white-gowned women in “Buddha and the Greek Chorus” or the Da Vinci-esque trappings of “Buddha-Lisa.” In “Dragon Retreat, Vermont,” a mythical Japanese dragon is being ridden by a white woman in jeans and a T-shirt, as if she were on horseback.

On some level, this work, while often nicely rendered and sometimes amusing, is a bit too casual for its own good. The effort of artists to bring together distant cultures, to explore commonality and accentuate differences, is a risky business. The artists here haven’t perfected culture bridging, but they’re on the right path.

BE THERE

Ingrid Boulting and Anne Ramis, through March 8 at Bagier Gallery, 453 E. Ojai Ave., Ojai. Hours: Thursday-Sunday, noon-6 p.m.; 646-3500.