Are you interested in seeing what a subset of local artists are making these days? Forty-three San Diego artists and three artist collectives also based in San Diego are included in the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s summer exhibition Here Not There now on exhibit at the museum’s La Jolla venue. The exhibition primarily features local artists working in an international style who have already exhibited at MCASD, have exhibited at local galleries or museums in the region within the last eighteen months, and/or artists who attended the UCSD Fine Art program with its guiding influence from the late UCSD emeritus professor Alan Kaprow. MCASD’s Associate Curator Lucía Sanromán curated this polite exhibition.

Glenna Jennings; "And Perhaps in that Lockbox

Everything Lay Hidden," 2009. Pigment Print.

20 x 30 in.

_{Image courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.}

A few artists included in Here Not There attempt to glean something from the U.S/Mexico border experience, but most of the artworks included in the exhibition follow current international trends and influences. Strains of influence by better known artists such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Tara Donovan, and Takashi Murakami are unmistakably present in this exhibition. Several works stand out because of their terrific idiosyncrasy, though. Such standouts include a series of photographs by Glenna Jennings from her "Raskolnikov" series that reveal the life of a contemporary high school cheerleader and her crystal meth addicted boyfriend, which parallels Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. Although, Jennings’s tragicomical photographs imply that the cheerleader character is pregnant trailer-trash living quite the lurid lifestyle. In the photographs, the cheerleader’s face remains outside of the camera’s viewfinder so that anyone can freely be projected into the role of the cheerleader. The photographs manage to be both campy fun and highly disturbing at the same time.

A visually compelling work in the exhibition is a gothic rose window shape cut into a gallery wall entitled “Echo” (2009) by artist Adam Belt. A TV screen displaying frenetic television snow rather than stained glass illuminates the tracery that frames the rose window shape. The frantic swarm of thousands of blinking television pixels is captivating and complements the ornate shape, which is based on a rose window from architecturally famous St. Denis Cathedral just outside of Paris.

A stirring work of two vigorous men shaking a mid-century linoleum topped chrome table is the subject of a video by Susannah Bielak. The video is featured along with several others where furniture is shaken on the Caltrans earthquake shake table at UCSD with the equivalent force of the 1985 magnitude 8.1 Mexico City tremor. The video of the two men manically shaking the table, entitled “Slapstick” (2009), becomes a funny, ribald joke in comparison to the other videos featuring the more scientifically shaken interiors. The linoleum topped table that starred in the videos, now carved with an image of collapsing buildings in its linoleum surface, accompanies the installation. All of the videos were completed in 2009 yet remain ever current because of this year’s Easter 6.9 seismic event in Mexicalli.

Another highlight is the photography by John Brinton Hogan that document the infrastructure at tourist destinations that guide a tourist to take a post card perfect snap-shot. The guidance structures for the tourists are monumentally elaborate and intrusive. When Hogan takes that step backward to document both the structure and the postcard view at Zion National Park, Anza Borego, and Bonneville Flats; he reveals an amusing, absurd compulsion of the nature tourism industry that finds it necessary to package natural wonders in a Disneyfied manner so that John Q. Public will better appreciate it.

An animated projection by Stephen Tompkins is mesmerizing psychological fun. Using the bilateral symmetry of the Rorschach inkblot test, Tompkins activates line drawings of recognizable images that perpetually morph into ever more complex imagery. Tomkins draws from endless ideas such as home, monsters, sex, and tattoos in his short repeating movie “Blackout Memoir/Invisible Voyage” (2010). Like the Rorschach test, the video projection creates associations that spawn ideas in the viewer but also reveals the artist’s subconscious. The artist also exhibits paintings, but the short animated black and white film is much more intriguing.

Viewers might also enjoy Wendell Kling’s installation, “Happy Apple Color Organ: A Sound and Light Instrument ” (undated). The artist uses a vintage 1972 Fisher Price Happy Apple child’s toy as a switching device to illuminate over 40 lamps and two sets of fake fireplace logs. The viewer participates in the piece by gently jostling the Happy Apple. As you manipulate the apple, you end up controlling an elaborate sound and light show. It is charming entertainment for both children and adults alike.

Maddening is a painting by Kelsey Brooks. In “Ya” (2009), two black, white, and day-glow pink figures with skull heads face one another on an empty white ground. Each figure has elaborate Easter egg-like decorated eyes. Hippy, groovy and virtually illegible low contrast script flanks the corners of the painting. A viewer might find the design vapid, and the subject is flip enough to cause one to froth with disdain. Although, anything that provokes such passions must have some merit and cannot be ignored.

The exhibition as a whole is a moderately filling buffet of hodgepodge of artistic themes. This reinforces the seeming random selection of artists both included and excluded from this exhibition. Seeing Here Not There may leave one wanting more grist and rebellion, but the exhibition will serve as convenient, validating guidance for San Diego art collectors with courage to buy local.