by Garrison Frost

Things tend to slow down during the summer in the art world, and that's especially true in the South Bay, where the art world is uniquely slow to begin with. But sometimes very interesting things emerge during these hot summer months, and "Nine" at Hermosa Beach's Gallery C falls into this category. Both inside and outside the art world, summer is a time to go more casual, to be less pretentious and maybe indulge in a little humor. After all, it's hot outside, and nobody wants to work that hard.

"Nine" captures this feeling perfectly. While it's always been something of a challenge to walk off the sun-drenched sidewalks of Hermosa Beach into the sublime confines of Gallery C's exhibition space, the transition feels much easier with "Nine." That's not to say that the work is shallow or less challenging. It's anything but.

All of the artists in the show are good, and while they have different styles and work in different media, they all seem to share a certain energy that I won't even try to name. The highlights of the show for me followed my own taste, which was captured well by two of the artists: Kiel Johnson and Abbie Baron Morganstein.

Johnson's "She Wanted to be a Globe" in acrylic, graphite and conte – for lack of more heightened language – simply kicks ass. It's a decidedly modern image that draws its aesthetic inspiration from a variety of sources including street graffiti, old science fiction magazines, cartoons and a whimsical imagination. The much larger format "Have a Seat" goes into the same territory with its overlapping portable toilets.

Morganstein strikes a familiar note with "Plant Day," which gives us sort of a cartoon-like portrait of a power plant not unlike the AES Generating Station just a mile or so south of the gallery. In Morganstein's eyes, the plant is both attractive and ugly, interesting and banal – just the way we see our plant here. It was a nice touch adding the piece to the show. This said, I probably got the most pleasure from a selection of smaller pieces that Morganstein has created by juxtaposing industrial drawings and monotone paintings of mushrooms. These paintings, combines with some other pieces by the artist have been wisely crammed together by the curator so that they all work together.

Although not every one of his pieces works effectively, Aaron Kraten also mines the same rough aesthetic as Johnson and Morganstein, although he is definitely going for something less representative. His mixed media pieces tend to bring together found elements such as old photographs, newspapers and Japanese comics with loosely rendered images of modern, punk youth. He does this to interesting effect in pieces like "Soft Filter" and "Conservation Emotion." I particularly liked the repeating paper airplane image in the latter work.

Working in completely different territory is Roni Stretch, whose canvases at first appear to be silent washes of a single color – or no color at all, just black. But upon closer inspection, the viewer discovers that much more is going on here, that embedded in the surface of each painting is a clear image of a face or a human figure. Sure, there's a bit of punch line to works such as this – and that's not considered a good thing by some – but that doesn't take away from just how cool they are to look at.

Douglas C. Bloom has one of the show's most appealing pieces in "Afternoon Drive," a painting that perfectly captures the feeling of blasting in one's car through a turn in the blazing heat of a Los Angeles summer. The painting's blurred image and burnt tones captures how such a drive would look like it would feel. The artist takes this same approach to other images, taking blocks of color and washed away images to show differing levels of perception. "In Frieda's Favorite Time of Day" and "Buffalo Nickel," he takes the same image of a house, but treats it very differently, giving a completely different mood. In "Stairway," he does the same kind of thing, cutting the image into different colors and degrees of clarity.

I also really enjoyed the sculptures of Brad Howe, particularly the two taller ones in the large gallery, "Giggles" and "Murmullo," which both seem to speak in the vocabulary of Roy Lichtenstein, but also seem to be up to something more imaginative.

Other artists participating in "Nine" include Lori Petty, Ann Thornycroft and Kirtland Ash. The show continues at Gallery C through Sept. 11.

(August 17, 2004)

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