Watercolors, Sculptures That Say Something

Wily William Wiley demonstrates his fine punmanship in an exhilarating new collection of watercolors and sculptures at L.A. Louver Gallery. Reading the Bay Area artist’s work--both the images and the handwritten texts embroidered within them--feels like eavesdropping on his stream of consciousness, which twists and turns, deepens and doubles back on itself.

In one otherwise wordless painting, he has us listening in on a conversation by others that serves, in Wiley’s coyly self-reflexive way, as a caption to the image considered: “So this is one of his? Yes. . . . But where’s the writing, he writes a little story on every one. . . . Not every one. Yes he always does. . . . I read it somewhere. They are enigmatic and don’t seem to quite go anywhere . . . and you never quite know what they are about.”

Well, true and not true. Wiley’s work is studded with coded references, but it does go somewhere. In fact, it refuses to stay still. Restlessness is one of its most appealing properties, the conviction that every thought can be (and often is) challenged, pulled like taffy into a dense and chewy dialogue.

The running commentary in this selection of Wiley’s work dwells most frequently on the state of politics, the environment, religion and art itself. Like all great diaries, Wiley’s is rich with personal references (the recurring image of the anvil, for instance, stems from the influence of two blacksmiths in the family, his uncle and grandfather), but unfolds as a collective cultural diary as well, a response to the issues of the day.

“Baiting the Candidate” sets two politicians (their bodies nothing but stacked boxes, their heads smooth spheres topped with dunce caps) to debating “the right to laugh,” and the military policy regarding sexual orientation, which Wiley has amended to “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t join.” Fragments of the candidates’ speeches line their boxy bodies. The statements are absurd but also absurdly close to the real thing, the puffed-up, fear-instilling rhetoric that characterizes political campaigns.

Wiley’s work is a lively ride and a serious one, for all its wit and wordplay. Evocations of violence, hypocrisy and cynicism barb many a sprightly painting here.

“As a Child, I Didn’t Know” is downright shattering. A wood panel painted in thirds of red, white and blue, it hints at the charged, declaratory presence of a flag or a Minimalist painting while (in the text that runs down one corner and along the bottom of the piece) challenging the misguided indoctrination that occurs in the name of both. A string stretched across the middle of the piece and held taut by two wine corks renders this work, and a handful of others in the show, a musical instrument. (On the evening of Aug. 18, Wiley is scheduled to play several of the works, accompanied by poet Michael Hammon.)

A jaunty hybrid of history painting, journal writing, storytelling and pithy, bumper-sticker wisdom, Wiley’s work abounds in visual and verbal revelations. It’s tremendous fun to spend time with, even though its humor stems from despair, from the continually dawning realization that we’re mucking it all up--the environment, the culture, the minds of the young. “For God’s Ache,” Wiley exclaims on one of the works here, and it’s a reverential plea, wrapped in the coy and cunning trappings of irreverence.

* L.A. Louver, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955, through Sept. 2. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Happy Upside-Down: Innocence and malevolence consort in a variety of unseemly ways in the paintings now up at Merry Karnowsky Gallery. The two-person show is called “The Happiest Place on Earth,” and it makes the gallery anything but. Taking a swipe at Disney and the whole genre of cartoon fantasy, both artists pick off the standard sugar coating like a nasty scab, letting the noxious fluids beneath flow as they will.

Camille Rose Garcia’s paintings have a dark, dark charm. They invert classic fairy tale formulas to show a realm in which evil and the grotesque are promoted from their status as threatening undercurrent and mainstreamed, given the key roles as well as the keys to the entire kingdom.

Putrescence and degradation put on their most chipper faces--big black cartoon eyes, sometimes glittered--and cavort within a dystopian landscape. Little mutant “cherrygirls” with tendrils for arms frolic atop a gargantuan millipede as it laps from a puddle of toxic slop in one painting. In “Burden,” Pinocchio figures take up scissors and saw to hack off the distended noses that give away their falseness.

The smaller, non-narrative paintings are similarly dense with distress. One shows a clown spewing black vomit, another a girl with a virus that has turned her lips black and her complexion sallow. Garcia’s surreal, sordid world has its sweet spots--sugary pinks, silver glitter, a slick, seductive surface--but they are all in the service of a pervasive creepiness, as if nostalgia itself has been contaminated.

The darkness in Emmeric Konrad’s paintings is pricklier and far less engaging. His distorted figures flaunt a crude sexuality tinged with violence. Several characters sport a “Druckmich” (hug me) message, an unsavory proposition even if this truly were the happiest place on earth.

* Merry Karnowsky Gallery, 170 S. La Brea Ave., (323) 933-4408, through Aug. 5. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

In Progress: Siobhan Liddell’s Projects show at the UCLA Hammer Museum, part of a new series to highlight contemporary artists, has the indefinite air of, indeed, a project--something worked on, planned, schematized, rather than something resolved or complete. Mostly, this works against the installation of wall drawings, glass and papier-ma^che objects. Though the show has a few compelling qualities, the overall effect adds up to less than the sum of its individual parts--synergy in reverse.

Occupying the museum’s Vault gallery, Liddell’s installation makes stunning use of the room’s high ceiling and curved back wall. The British-born, New York-based artist has drawn a fractured sunburst of yellow rays directly on the wall. Its short strokes radiate the intense energy of a force field, with a powerfully pulsing center and echoing rings that quiet as they fade into the room’s side walls. A trace of gold residue from the drawing dusts the floor below, and a long, yellow glass cylinder rests there as well, a mysteriously solid beam of light.

On the opposite wall, Liddell draws similar patterns of spiraling rays. But in graphite on hanging rolls of paper, the images read as inert and inconsequential. White, fossil-like forms mounted at various heights on the wall bear the imprint of manual effort, the pressing of fingers, the gripping and shaping of the papier-ma^che mixed with plaster, clay and gesso.

Two crimson upholstered wedges in the center of the gallery invite visitors to get comfortable while experiencing the space. With some patience and persistence, one can start to make out a soundtrack that plays intermittent repetitive sounds--sawing? breathing? birds calling?--but they are as overwhelmed by the Westwood traffic noise outside as the objects inside. Lacking any real density of sensation, they are dwarfed by the potential of the empty space around them.

* UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., (310) 443-7000, through Sept. 17. Closed Mondays.

Image Leaders: At Molly Barnes Gallery, “12 Divas” is an act of homage with stellar intentions if not always stellar contents. Curated by Dextra Frankel, the show features a dozen well-established Southern California women whom the subtitle hails as “Mentors and Heroes.” Whether or not they are well represented here by the choices on view, all are worthy of tribute, some--like Eleanor Antin and Rachel Rosenthal--as path-setting pioneers.

Phyllis Green’s ceramic confections, outrageous heads of lavender and green curls, steal the show on the upper floor of the gallery, while Carole Caroompas’ hard-hitting, hallucinatory montages of domesticity and media-induced artifice dish up the heartiest portion of rapture below. Single works by several of the artists--a ‘70s collage by Alexis Smith, photo-documentation of a recent sand installation by Connie Zehr, an enchanting canvas by Patssi Valdez, a photo-text work by Antin and a video compilation of Rosenthal’s performances--act more as teasers than substantive contributions to the show.

Karen Carson’s snazzy wood and mirror wall pieces inject an adrenaline rush into the mix, which is heavy on works that invite a slower, contemplative response, such as Martha Alf’s luminous still lifes of pears, Lita Albuquerque’s mystical-spiritual “Auric Field” paintings, Helen Pashgian’s epoxy box-paintings that play pleasantly on light and translucence, and Ruth Weisberg’s trio of images exploring the conditions of buoyancy and immersion.

Curator Frankel’s picks have a generational consistency, more or less, but no other unifying logic in terms of media, approach or theme. These 12 women, simply put, are significant players, and exposure to their work is always welcome--even if only in the bit parts they’re given here.

* Molly Barnes Gallery, 1414 6th St., Santa Monica, (310) 395-4404, through Sept. 2. Closed Sundays and Mondays.