Collective Confusion

If there’s more than the usual amount of clangor and shuffling of ideas in the Art City II Gallery at the moment, it could be the result of artists’ heads bumping. The keyword here is collaboration, in an exhibition called “Synergy: A Multi-Media Show of Works Completed Through Collaboration.”

Although there’s an intense buzz of idealism here, the artistic end products are decidedly, definitively mixed, and clarity is brushed aside. But then, it could well be because collaboration--a staple in other artistic media, such as film, theater, dance and music--is hardly typical in the visual arts, where singular focus and individualism of expression are the norm.

If you read the artists’ statement on the wall, you’d think otherwise: “Artistic collaboration is a primary social device that brings community members together to create for the purpose of social gatherings and celebration, thereby defusing tension, discord or other social ailments.” The art here doesn’t manage all of that, but it does manage to tickle the eye and other senses.

The most dramatic piece on display is a dreamy vignette, concocted by Paul Benavidez, Rae Eastman and Dan Layman, in which a bed is fitted with mirrors instead of a mattress. Its rough, scaly bedspread is flung upward as if by a sudden wind, up into the rafters of the gallery and with cockroach-like insects--bedbugs? clinging to it.

Elsewhere, notable Ventura-based artists Gerd Koch and Paul Lindhard fuse their works, in two and three dimensions, respectively. Koch’s fiery and dynamic paintings of mythical figures hang on the wall, over Lindhard’s arrangement of rough stones in ritualistic patterns on the floor.

Further mystifying the installation and throwing into question the nature of their respective artistic paths, a large and gnarled tree branch floats in midair, suspended from the ceiling, behind which a projection of another Koch painting is cast on the wall. The very nature of art is dematerialized.

Softly howling in the back corner, MB Hanrahan’s grisly and bright-colored painting “True Blondes” finds a female nude hanging upside-down, amidst skeletons all dressed up with nowhere to go: Apparently, they’re deputized by the Grim Reaper, whose scythe is one of the physical props in the corner installation.

Hanrahan’s painting was one of the creative byproducts of a collaboration with photographer Steve Aguilar, who shoots scenes with a “starving African child” doll along with nudes and jesters’ outfits, in a vague, grisly circus ambience.

Another piece, which involves the most collaborative forces of all, is a collection of about 75 ceramic faces by 16 artists, in a sandbox-like frame. Organized by the CSUN-based Michellino, this heap of faces seems to generate a rumbling visual hum. That sense of a hum is a reasonable enough metaphor for the collaboration here, and the effect is somewhere between soothing and annoying.

BE THERE

“Synergy: A Multi-Media Show of Works Completed Through Collaboration,” through June 30 at Art City II, 31 Peking St. in Ventura. Noon-5 p.m., Wednesday-Sunday; (805) 648-1690.