Mark Quint has thirty-years in the art racket. Over that time he has represented numerous artists and earned the respect of the San Diego art community for encouraging both art collecting and art making in this region. A new exhibition Quint: Three Decades of Contemporary Art at the California Center for the Arts Museum in Escondido includes an impressive roster of local, regional, and nationally recognized artists that Mr. Quint has represented over the years. Artworks drawn from local private collections as well as other museums and galleries represent this sampling from artists such as Mel Bochner, Byron Kim, Ryan McGinness, and Manny Farber. The exhibit is strongly diverse and was curated by California Center for the Arts Museum curator Olivia Luther.

It is worth the trek to Escondido to view this exhibit due to several artworks. Standouts worth traveling to see include an artwork from 2006 by the late Icelandic artist Birgir Andresson, which is an oversized paint sample. Presented in the style of a huge color chip from a paint store, a field of dirty gray-green covers an entire wall. Printed at the top in large letters high above is the paint color’s name, “Blasting Wind.” Together the hue and its inclement name compel the viewer to conjure the idea of a grand romantically sublime landscape without the artist actually creating one. It is quite a feat of prestidigitation, which might also cool a viewer off in the late summer heat.

Jan van Munster’s Ice Table (1990) also stands out because it also invokes the concept of cold. A two-foot square steel table with a white velvet top sits humming in a gallery. Examining this curious artifact with a cord plugged into an electrical outlet, one might notice that its white velvet surface sparkles. If one strains to focus on velvet’s nap you might realize that the table top is actually covered not in velvet but actual crystals of frost. A compressor under the table freezes a copper plate that reacts with the ambient air to create the frosty surface.

Photographs by Lee Materazzi perfectly capture domestic frustration. In “Head in Utensil Drawer” (2008), a female figure stands bent over a dreaded overstuffed kitchen drawer. Conveying eternal frustration amidst copious amounts of cooking paraphernalia, the figure’s head is buried to the shoulders in potato mashers, pointed wine openers, sharp knives and scissors, and other ominous looking kitchen gadgets. Another photo by Materazzi features a male figure who is buried in an unwieldy garden hose. Her photographs are amusing and threatening at the same time.

A large evocative photograph by Melanie Smith features an image of smog choked Mexico City. The aerial photograph entitled “Tianguis Aerial (Reflex 4)” (2003) appears as a mirror-image of a cityscape with a bulging, fault-like depression running through it. The deformed topography creates eerie discomfort in the viewer. Other artworks worth savoring are by Kenneth Capps, Kristjan Gudmundsson, and Roman de Salvo.

A sculpture by Rebecca Horn called “Fructify Brush” is good also, but it is unfortunately placed near a security camera and an environmental monitor that both intrude so much that they potentially read as part of the sculpture. Another artwork’s placement that creates difficulty is Thomas Glassford’s fluorescent “Aster 140 T8/4100 K” that tries to be read as a huge overly intrusive snowflake trying to invade “Blasting Wind” by Birgir Andresson. This type of curatorial juxtaposition in its attempt to be amusing falls flat due to the literal nature of the visual joke. This type of joke can also have the ruinous effect of a misreading or misinterpretation of an artwork.

There are many more artworks in this exhibit by artists such as Jean Lowe, Patricia Patterson, and Kim MacConnel. Mark Quint’s various gallery incarnations have perpetually played important roles in promoting art, and this sampling of artists that he has represented over the last thirty years is well timed and worth viewing.