Art review: 'Supernatural' @ Jancar Gallery

The supernatural was a linchpin for art in every culture since time immemorial – at least until the science-infused modern era said, “Hold on.” The inflation of nature into something super, whether volcanoes as terrible pathways linking the underworld to the heavens, resurrection as a triumph over death or constellations as symbols of heroes and deities, typically served as a means for giving coherent shape to the unfathomable.

At Jancar Gallery, “Supernatural” assembles 36 diverse works by 18 contemporary artists to reinvest the term with rather different meanings. A 2007 Micol Hebron ink-jet photograph is perhaps a touchstone for the show’s wide-ranging viewpoint: A young woman, the sleeve of her T-shirt rolled up to display a prominent tattoo on her bicep, takes aim through the scope of a rifle at a white unicorn peacefully grazing in a bucolic field. The camera-made scene is a plain fiction, the common urge to destroy the marvelous is nonetheless heart-rending, the notion of artists as a slayers of mythologies is pictured and art as itself an arena for exploring the unfathomable is upheld.

Works in the show range from a 1926 vintage nude by William Mortensen, the Hollywood Pictorialist photographer who avoided so-called “straight” photography, to a 2010 diptych by Andrea Bowers, which juxtaposes a romantic pencil drawing of butterflies and a bird with a photojournalist’s blunt picture of a veiled Iranian woman “flipping the bird” at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the startled president.

David Askevold chronicles a near-death mishap in a staged New Mexico snake-handling ritual, which found its unlikely counterpart in the destruction of a camera. The inevitable conflict between worldly experience and pictorial representation informs Dorit Cypis’ “discovery” of the Earth’s curvature, which flips Copernicus upside-down.

Doug Harvey’s five-panel painted peep show hinges on the erotic coupling of vintage cartoons. Taking Duchamp out for a spin, John Baldessari dismantles art’s promise of alchemical transformation with a witty medicine bottle whose potion guarantees the satisfaction of every human desire.

Transcendence doesn’t have to mean something is beyond consciousness. “Supernatural” in fact turns out to be quite down-to-earth.

-- Christopher Knight

Follow me @twitter.com/KnightLAT

Jancar Gallery, 961 Chung King Road, Chinatown, (213) 625-2522, through Aug. 28. Closed Sundays through Tuesdays. www.jancargallery.com

Photo: Micol Hebron, "I Wanna Know What Love Is -- Part II (The Assassin)," 2007, ink-jet. Credit: Jancar Gallery

Comments

[Donald Frazell]

And all rather limited to fit its audiences intelligence i guess. Once you see it, get the joke, whats left? Nothing. You gotta live with these things, they are suposed to grow on you, not make a "witty" splash, and then emptiness, having made its ever so clever "point". One not worth talking about, and rather childish. Edward Weston destroyed all his pictorialist glass plates of Hollywood types in Glendale just before this time, and took "straight"(is that a joke or comment?)to new heights, and left this fool in the ashcan of history. To be dug up in more academic and decadent times.

Artsits CREATE mythologies, dont you get that? We reflect the world around us, not just the one we live personally, but attempt to connect us to more, to the all, to nature, humanity, and yes, GOD. A word you all have gotten so scared of, thinking you will live forever, You wont. Life is far from meanningless, there is no need for heaven and hell to find truth and beauty, but mankind does seem to need the carrot and the stick, or become a hollow shell only interested in ones own well being, and massive egos.

This really is pretty dumb. You all need a much better sense of humor, try Colbert for a few weeks, even South Park, which out grew its adolescent idiocies with Chefs demise. But is probably too deep and complex for art types.
Do you like fish sticks? Probably.

art collegia delenda est

[nancy evans]

Agree with the comment that artist participate and/or create mythologies. Artist's being ironic does not stand up to the Bigger Picture. It's a fun moment of self reflection and that's about all.

[Fernando]

I'm an art student who stopped going to art school. I find all this stuff totally stupid. The descriptions are like Bill Hader's "Stefon" character's descriptions of crazy night clubs on Saturday Night Live.

[william wray]

What's great this witty aperitif is if your in a hurry you can digest everything from this show in 45 seconds and still have room for a nourishing dinner at a more substantial show.