‘Phenobarbiedoll’ Runs Out of Adventures

The best thing about “The Adventures of Phenobarbiedoll and More: Recent Work by Corey Stein” is the title. Setting the stage for a story that begins with a collision between a drug and a doll, the title of Stein’s exhibition leads viewers to believe that we’re in for a wild ride through some pretty twisted terrain, the highlights of which probably will include a scathingly hilarious denouement linking powerful pharmaceuticals and America’s love affair with a 13-inch-tall doll who turned 40 last year and still manages to galvanize opinion about the stereotypes she represents.

The first work seen by visitors to Santa Ana’s Grand Central Art Center (operated by Cal State Fullerton) confirms this promise. Just inside the front door is a large wall-painting that looks like an advertisement for a mass-produced toy, complete with snappy graphics, bright colors and enthusiastic messages from a fictitious corporate sponsor. At the center of the composition stands Phenobarbiedoll, a big, round chalky-white pill (phenobarbital) from which Barbie doll limbs protrude, in just the right places.

As an image, Stein’s hybridized plaything isn’t much to look at. But neither are the similarly shaped cartoons on the labels of M&M; candies, and that doesn’t stop them from starring in TV ads. What counts are the adventures on which these silly human surrogates embark--how effectively they get viewers emotionally involved in their dramas.

This is where Stein’s exhibition runs out of gas. The handcrafted version of her cleverly named toy adds no new ideas to the wall-painting. Nor do Phenobarbiedoll’s five sidekicks, whose names--which serve as titles for the sculptures--also taken from medications commonly given to people with epilepsy, don’t have much of a ring to them. “Depa Coat,” “Miso Zin,” “P-B Doll,” “K. Lona Pin” and “Tegra Pall”--each neatly presented in her own amateurishly drawn package--have the presence of rejects from a misguided marketing campaign.

And that’s it for Phenobarbiedoll--gone from the show before a single adventure begins.

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A wall label and an exhibition brochure inform viewers that Stein had epilepsy until she underwent curative surgery in 1991. Phenobarbiedoll and her other works, however, are not self-portraits. They reveal nothing personal about past experiences nor do they present insights that are in any way specific.

The next part of the exhibition is populated by five crudely sewn satin dolls, two of which are vomiting. An open book serves as a wall label, explaining that Stein’s supposedly multicultural dolls illustrate a Navajo myth about a seizure disorder and its cure. Unfortunately, it’s much more compelling to read two pages of the book than it is to look at the lumpy dolls.

What little humor there is goes even flatter in the three remaining sections, where some of the works’ graphic content accounts for the sign at the entrance warning parents that the show may not be suitable for children.

Following the doll theme, “Satin Satan” is just what it says it is, suggesting that Stein is more interested in word games than in making works that resonate visually.

A series of life-size sculptures titled “Woman Fixing Herself” takes such wordplay to extremes, using the colloquial phrase for neutering as the basis for some unspeakably distasteful pieces.

A fine line separates satire from slapstick. An even finer line separates slapstick from stupidity. Stein’s flat-footed works trample across both, leaving viewers feeling like the victims of false advertising.

* Grand Central Art Center, operated by Cal State Fullerton, 125 N. Broadway, Santa Ana, through Nov. 4. Open every day. (714) 567-7233.