During the long, hot, dry summer a gallery art exhibition should do whatever it takes to make a statement, generate controversy, or create waves—do anything it takes to rouse the masses from their summer heat-induced coma. Unfortunately, like a milk product that is cooked to stave off health complaints, the summer Quint Gallery exhibition, HOMING IN: An Exhibition of 50 San Diego Artists is boiled down, pasteurized, and sanitized for ease of consumption. Quint Gallery director Ben Strauss-Malcolm has assembled a group of 50 local “top tier” artists for a summer art exhibition that according to gallery literature attempts to be “reflective of the full gamut of work coming out of studios in the San Diego region”—all too broad a claim.

ZAC MONDAY, "Him #6"(2008).

Photo Credit: Quint Contemporary Art

All of the entries were not supposed to exceed 24 inches wide due to space limitations—conveniently, the perfect size to hang in an average domestic interior. As you continue through the exhibit your heat-induced stupor will remain, as it seems that the full gamut of San Diego artists is unable to generate truly controversial ideas. Neither does it seem that any San Diego artists subscribe to the concept of avant-gardism. There is just too much sameness and safeness in this show for it to be described as anything more than the dysfunctional, the dreaded, and the condescendingly jaded adjective…interesting.

Most of the artwork here is a tasteful product with the potential of looking good over a couch. A few artists do manage to breach taste, thus enabling them to stand out, which is a good thing here. Two artists whose work might not look so good over a couch are Zac Monday and Steve Gibson. Monday offers a grotesque vivid blue anthropo- and zoomorphic African mask-like high relief entitled “Him #6” (2008) made by crochet from various itchy-looking polyester yarns. Steve Gibson’s work “Good Morning” (2009) is a very crudely painted gouache-on-paper clown silhouette surrounded by gaudy stripes of color.

STEVE GIBSON, "Good

Morning" (2009).

Courtesy of Luis de Jesus

Seminal Projects.

Photo Credit: Quint

Contemporary Art.

Perennially strong artists Roman de Salvo and the brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre also manage to offer anti-aesthetic work that gets noticed. Like a dated 1970s light fixture, de Salvo’s “Harvest Hearth” (2001) is a fireplace hearth carved into a clumsy manzanita burl that lights up and is suspended from a tarnished bronze chain. The de la Torre brothers’ mixed media relief “Domino Theory” (2003) has a fantastically garish blown-glass purple devil’s face, with yellow horns and bad teeth, surrounded by a field of fake ivory dominos.

Three artists stand out in this exhibit because their work here is very attractive. Jay Johnson’s petite bronze and copper “We Think We Know” (2009) protrudes from the wall on a shaft weighted so that it delicately balances a small sculptured figure. Barbara Sexton’s velvety rich variations of black and whites in her photograph “Double Negation Number 4/pb1 (Binary Group)” (2009) depict backward letters t and f looking as if they were made of plaster and floating in an infinite void—its meaning is perplexing but enjoyably so. Anne Mudge’s sensuous hanging sculpture made of thin wire and flesh-hued tape entitled “Study 132” (2009) is equally intriguing.

One quiet work, Kenneth Capps’s “Meter X” (1987) is an austere segment of treated steel tubing that one can’t stop looking at because of its elegant simplicity. In contrast, Marie Najera’s “Adriatic II” (2009) is so silent that it might not be noticed in a high-tech clean room. Najera’s work is a too thinly painted aqua-hued encaustic on panel work featuring three yellowish ribbon shapes that are oriented from left to right. Unfortunately, the painting’s inherent design with its thin surface and horizontal emphasis actually encourages a viewer’s eyes to flee from looking at it. Another work that does not succeed is Gail Roberts’s painting of a small bird scull on a large wood panel, “Owl” (2008), reads as an obscure, dated joke on Sherrie Levine’s mid-1980s artwork made of plywood (such as Levine’s “Yellow Knot Prototype”).

ANNE MUDGE, "Study 132" (2009).

^{Photo Credit: Quint Contemporary Art.}

An easy to overlook work is Michael James Armstrong’s steel and acrylic “ArrowDeco Form no. 1” (2009). It is a translucent acrylic arrow shape pointing downward from steel bands. It is mounted too high and fails to activate the surrounding space, thus it doesn’t get noticed. Several viewers had to be told that it was apart of the exhibition. Unfortunately, too many other works in this exhibition also fade into the background because the premise of the show does not showcase the artworks’ content.

Anyone interested in the look and conditions of art in San Diego should be disappointed in this exhibit because it appears that these top tier artworks were selected with the main intention of potentially matching some client’s home interior décor. The works must not have any real quirks that might distract from a local art-buying patron’s ocean view and must not be extreme enough to clash with the fabric on the couch. HOMING IN is a show curated to furnish the recognized tastes of local art-buyers; it therefore only homes in on artworks that this specific class of consumer might presumably buy.