A Souvenir Approach to Surrealism

“Dustin Shuler Targets Transportation” is more of a souvenirstand than an art exhibition. Imagine stepping into a 3-D version of a Web site dedicated to the career of an artist who has been moderately successful working the public art circuit, and you’ll have an idea of what’s in store for visitors to Santa Barbara’s Contemporary Arts Forum.

Only one finished work of art is displayed. Outside the gallery, on the wall adjoining the upper level of the shopping center’s parking structure, Shuler has hung the front section of a Volkswagen Microbus, its doors flung open to form a shallow relief sculpture.

To prevent viewers from mistaking his ready-made work from a three-dimensional billboard or a sign advertising an automotive parts store, the L.A.-based artist has fastened a personalized license plate to it. The moment you sound out “Elefant,” you notice that the VW’s doors resemble a cartoon version of an African elephant’s ears; its headlights stand in for eyes. If you squint, parts of the bumper look like tusks.

Conceptually, Shuler’s conflation of a vehicle and a beast adds nothing but size to a small, incidental sculpture Picasso made by welding a pair of handlebars to a bicycle seat so they resembled a bull’s head. Throughout the century, Surrealists of all stripes have trafficked in similar fusions of nature and culture.

Inside the gallery, Shuler borrows directly--and flat-footedly--from Claes Oldenburg, relying on the Pop Surrealist’s Brobdingnagian scale-shifts to make his own mildly amusing works. “Dragonfly” is a large model airplane that has been stuck to the wall with a large nail.

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“Shish Kabob” consists of three toy cars skewered by a hefty nail. Stacks of more toy cars, ranging in scale from 1/8 to 1/72, are impaled on the pointed spindles where some restaurant cashiers stick checks after customers pay them.

“Yellow VW Pelt” is just that: the body of a plastic model Shuler has cut into fairly flat sections and hung on the wall as if it were the skin of a freshly killed animal. “Batmobile Pelt,” “Spider Pelt,” “Triumph Pelt,” “Green Pinto Pelt” and “Skinned Caddy” are all riffs on this theme. “The Scorpion,” a matchbox-size backhoe whose shovel has been replaced with a nail, provides some variety to an otherwise repetitious display.

But the biggest problem with the exhibition inside the gallery is that it entirely comprises models (of proposed and realized projects), photographs (documenting the construction and installation of various works) and drawings (both schematic collages and quasi-architectural blueprints). The dramatic scale shifts on which Shuler’s art depends thus take place only in your head, not in the flesh.

In its heyday, Conceptual art downplayed the physicality of objects in order to amplify the impact of ideas. In Shuler’s hands, this style’s bare-bones format and anti-commercial stance take a turn toward simple, I’m-the-guy-for-the-job salesmanship. All but one of the 63 works displayed derives from proposals the artist has submitted to public art committees or is a souvenir of such a project. It’s not much fun to be treated as a bureaucrat when you visit an exhibition.

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Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, 653 Paseo Nuevo, Santa Barbara, (805) 966-5373, through Oct. 1. Closed Mondays.