| Outer Limits |
The Second City Council is a nonprofit community gallery dedicated to supporting art that crosses boundaries and weaves the strands of our complex community together.
Currently on view is "Bars, Barriers & Borders," an exhibit that spells out this mandate loud and clear. Seldom in its 14-month-old existence has the Second City Council mounted a collection of work with a stronger central focus one that unites each piece in the gallery to the underlying theme of the show.
In the case of "Bars, Barriers & Borders," juror Jennifer Jaskowiak (curator of USC's Fisher Gallery) has selected 26 artworks that fall into the general category of conceptual art. This means that the "creative concept" (or idea) behind the work is its driving force, rather than the artistic style or method of its execution.
First place was awarded to Juanita Richeson for "Canal Street Vestibule," a poignant black-and-white photograph of homeless and impoverished women in some back-street New Orleans enclave.
Akemi Smith walked away with second place for her colorful oil painting called "Gateway." A geometric abstraction that consists of lines, poles and cross-hatches that lurch across an electrically charged field, it alludes to the exhibit's theme symbolically.
Equally captivating is "Fence," a small bronze sculpture that stops visitors in their tracks. It also garnered Christopher Piazza third place. What you see when you scrutinize this unique work are 56 tiny men, 14 to a side, lined up shoulder to shoulder facing outward. Together they form a solid fence around a totally empty square. Just think about it all of these men are guarding or protecting, surrounding or defending a complete void.
Also powerful are two prints by Dirk Hagner. In one, "American Posada" (a black-and-white engraving), Hagner depicts skeletons in sombreros (a la "Day of the Dead") crossing the life-threatening border between the United States and Mexico. In the other, "Red and Blue Immigration" (created from a woodcut and movable type), we see early Pilgrims against the repeated declension of the verb "immigrate" (i.e. I immigrate, you immigrate, he and she immigrates, we immigrate, etc.). The concept behind Hagner's prints is a no-brainer.
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Last summer, assemblage artist Eva Kolosvary-Stupler found an old rusty lock in Vienna. After bringing it home to Palos Verdes, she fashioned an imaginative wall sculpture called "Schloss." Since the word "schloss" means both "castle" and "lock" in German, the work suggests multiple meanings. Physically and politically, a lock can keep you in and others out. As a metaphor, it can allow emotion and imagination into your life, or lock them out forever.
Frank Mapson's work plays with a similar concept in his symbolic painting, "The Closet." Acknowledging that the word "closet" is a vernacular gay term in contemporary culture, Mapson's surreal imagery depicts a silhouetted man in front of an open closet door. A question immediately arises: Is the man entering the closet (going into hiding) or "coming out"' of the closet into the world?
The stunning screen print of a barbed-wire knot is the work of Fred Hoerr; but you must read the label to get the full impact of his metaphorical image. Called "Consciousness," the knot alludes to the unforgiving rigidity of his religious upbringing and his endless, hopeless search for perfection and redemption.
Driving the theme home is "Pelican Bay Prison," a special installation by Jesse Gonzalez and Raymond Casares. Literally locked up behind bars for more than a decade, these two inmates taught themselves to draw in order to stay in touch with the world and their loved ones.
Walking into a facsimile of their jail cell, you'll find 11 ballpoint drawings that express various images of Mexican mythology, Hispanic movies, popular culture and pulp fiction.
Ultimately, this exhibit makes clear that it's not physical bars and barriers that separate one human being from another; but prejudice, discrimination, injustice and power-wielding attitudes.
Shirle Gottlieb is a Long Beach free-lance writer.
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