Screen Gems

You know things are not status quo at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art this summer from the get go. Parked on the landing in front of the museum’s normally stately entrance on State Street is a bulbous old car, painted silver and fitted with numerous television sets in its windows.

This is the turf of famed video and conceptual artist Nam June Paik, the Korean emigre who has been creating engaging and meaningful art out of TV sets since the 1960s. Moving to New York, he discovered the portable video camera, and his aesthetic course was set. He has been working in the art-world margins of the TV-saturated world ever since. It’s not for nothing that he was named “one of the 25 most influential artists of the 20th century” by ARTnews magazine.

Inside the museum, we find many more TVs commandeered for art’s sake. Cathode rays and abstract info streams rule in pieces such as the huge, totem-like “WAIS Station II,” in the middle of the McCormick Gallery, with its busy hive of data spewing forth on rows of monitors.

More TVs, emitting more nonlinear material, are found in works like “IN-Flux House (American Home),” a house-like structure built from television sets, that basic building block of American consciousness. “John Cage Robot” pays tribute to a friend and mentor, whose own mixture of freely experimental attitude and Zen-like poise can be found in Paik’s work. Both are radicals with a cause and a sense of calm.

“More Log-In: Less Logging” from the ‘90s combines TVs and piles of books as sculptural objects, with their own loaded meanings as containers of culture. Not incidentally, Paik can also boast having coined the term “electronic superhighway,” way back in the ‘70s, long before the Internet revolution grabbed hold of our sociocultural reality. What Paik has been dealing with all these years is electronic culture, as exemplified by the pervasive television monitor.

His work has always been visually dazzling and, while implicitly questioning the meaning of electronic culture, never taking broad swipes at it or making judgmental statements. Rather, he addresses the culture by example, allowing viewers to draw their own conclusions.

In short, the museum’s Paik retrospective is nothing short of a blockbuster, suitable for the whole family, and a reassuring sign of the museum’s sometimes questionable commitment to contemporary art. Of course, quibblers could note that Paik, who has been working with this material and these ideas for three decades, is hardly up-to-the-minute. And yet he is: Paik is one of those bona fide visionaries, ahead of his time then, and relevant now.

DETAILS

Nam June Paik, Video Art Pioneer, through Oct. 8 at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1130 State St. Hours: Tuesday-Thursday, Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sunday, noon-5 p.m.; 963-4364.

EASY DOES IT: As the title suggests, “Vacation Views,” presented by the Oxnard Art Assn. at the American Commercial Bank in Oxnard, is a pleasant little diversion. The art tends to be evocative, celebrating the great outdoors and the therapy of urban escape. ‘Tis the season.

Mel Rhoads’ “The Cabin” is a simple watercolor, with a cabin seen in the distance in a meandering field; and Lee Hodges’ “Red Rock Falls” depicts its watery cascade in mixed media, with collage elements adding texture. Debbie DeFoi’s “Joshua Tree at Red Rock Canyon” basks in the arid beauty of that spot, with aptly spare brushwork.

Not all the pieces here take a straight expressive route. Marian Ibers’ impressive “On the Yangtse” finds three women working in a rice paddy, their wide-brimmed hats of different colors creating an almost abstract pattern of orbs. Design kitsch from the ‘50s informs “6 Emotional Flowers,” by Carrie Rosebruah, with a lean drawing style and minimalist quaintness.

Generally, though, the art here is about a getaway mentality. The viewer’s mind drifts off to notions of vacating. Given the circumstances of this show, that’s a sign of success.

DETAILS

“Vacation Views,” through Sept. 8 at American Commercial Bank, 155 South A St., in Oxnard. Hours: Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.; Friday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.; 487-6581.

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* Josef Woodard, who writes about art and music, can be reached by e-mail at joeinfo@aol.com.