May / June 2017 - art ltd 25

snow. Hanging on the gallery walls, wrappingaround the hanging eco-spheres, Giobbi creates smaller episodes on a series of 7-by-5-inch panels. Yet, there is somethingmissing, there are no humans, birds, beasts,nor insects for that matter to inhabit thesemicrocosms. The dangers and decay of thenatural world, those on which it depends,have been removed. However, though Giobbi’spretense of a sublime-free romantic landscapemight be false, it is quite a beautiful fiction.

—MOLLY ENHOLM

LONG BEACH, CA

Frank Romero: “Dreamland”

at Museum of Latin American Art

While this exhibition surveys LA’s pop andsocial iconography from the past 40 years,the pieces that stand out, that address ourcity’s ever-evolving history, are the artist’s politically themed paintings. One of FrankRomero’s most renowned works, Death of Rubén Salazar (1986), is a large oil (fromthe Smithsonian American Art Museum) depicting East LA’s Silver Dollar Café. This illustration of the site and scenario of civilrights journalist Salazar’s 1970 killing, during a raid by a SWAT team, commemorates LA’svolatile activist history. Romero, while an ad-mirer of Latino journalist Salazar, expressedhis own political ideals in the 1970s and ‘80s,mainly through artistic movements. These in-cluded the “Los Four” artist collective, ofwhich he was a member, which helped bringLatino art to LACMA in 1974, and “Asco,”the more low-key East LA Chicano perform-ance/conceptual art group.

Another Romero work visually recounting so-cial injustice is The Closing of Whittier Blvd.(1984). This dark-toned painting features sixsheriffs behind barriers and another sheriff on horseback, holding an old-fashioned spear,all blocking the passage of all vehicular

traffic. Other history paintings include TeatroCampesino (1986), a theatrical performanceof a farm worker and his wife, hands up, in-spired by the acting group of the same name;and MacArthur Park, the Arrest of the TacoWagon, an Attack on Culture (2010), with a lush Los Angeles as a backdrop.

Comprised of more than 200 pieces portray-ing the sweep of Los Angeles life andenvirons over several decades, this exhibitionincludes murals, paintings of various sizes,mixed-media works, several with neon, andceramic sculpture, filling up every museumgallery. Here also are boulevards, freeways,overpasses, hills, ‘60s-era sedans and con-vertibles, mariachi bands, skeletons, nudesand gothic houses, many pieces painted inbright primary and softer pastel colors. Stylesinclude primitive two-dimensional to three-dimensional, and some show influence ofMatisse’s and Picasso’s techniques, thanksto Romero’s academic training at Otis Col-lege as a teenager and later at Cal State LA.Another poignant artwork is the serigraphFreeway Wars (1987) with its two sedanswith backseat passengers shooting at eachother. Mythical scenes are also here; TheGhost of Evergreen Cemetery (1987) fea-tures a black and a white ghost flying over astreetcar, small industrial buildings and a citycemetery, all incongruously adjoining eachother at an intersection.

—LIZ GOLDNER

OXNARD, CA

Joanne Julian: “Defying Darkness:

Selected Works 2009-2016”

at the Carnegie Art Museum

In a delightful paradox, this intriguing exhibi-tion shows Joanne Julian crackling with theimaginative intensity of a lightning bolt, butsomehow doing so continuously over a pe-riod of seven years rather than for a briefmoment. Presumably this feat is the result of the artist’s having mastered multiple disci-plines and media over the course of severaldecades. Taken as a whole, “Defying Dark-ness” is an impressive achievement,blending the disparate skills of printmaking,botanical and avian illustration, Zen Buddhistink painting, calligraphy, and abstract compo-sition into 32 distinctive works thatnevertheless each bear the imprint of a single vision. The show is divided into four principal sections: “Skies,” “Birds andFeathers,” “Botanicals,” and “Bugs.” Inmonotypes such as the monumental Rain(2010), Julian reverses the expected polarityof images of the sky, allowing a deep dark-ness to dominate the middle two thirds ofthe picture. It’s not a new approach to creat-ing negative space, but in Julian’s work thedeployment of black attains an almost metaphysical grandeur. In a quote from the exhibition’s catalogue essay by Meher

McArthur, Julian explains that she prefers“the depth of a dark tone rather than the flatness of a white surface.” From a compo-sitional standpoint, these large areas ofdense blackness offer the artist an arrestingway of extending the imaginary space de-scribed within the image beyond the edgesof the paper. In Rain, for example, one’s ex-perience of the delicately rendered clouds atthe top and bottom of the sheet, and of theglistening lines of precipitation that emanatefrom them, is sharply enhanced by the feel-ing of deep space implied by the interveningnight sky.

No account of Julian’s work would be com-plete without mentioning the exquisite detailshe lavishes on representing feathers, leaves,and scales. In fact, the sweeping arcs thatgive feathers their distinctive form are at leastas central to Julian’s aesthetic as the domina-tion of black. Using graphite and Prismacolor,she articulates their structure in a way thatexpresses their function—layers of gracefularcs float or fly through the dimensional spaceof more than half of the works. Julian’s abilityto capture energy and movement reaches itspeak in a group of works that employ ravensas core elements in their imagery. The earlierpieces from 2010 show these birds burstinginto elegant splatters of black ink. In The Confrontation (2016), two ravens face off in a whirling mid-air battle. By taking thesecommon creatures and magnifying their physicality, Julian reframes the centuries old confrontation between life and art.

—CHARLES DONELAN

BAKERSFIELD, CA

Stephen Douglas: “Paint + Process”

at Bakersfield Museum of Art

The artworks in “Paint + Process” straddlethe unwieldy divide between painting as amedium that is self-expressive and portrai-ture as a method in which painting is used torepresent the most complex of phenomena,namely the human countenance. As humanbeings are wont to do, we scan the face ofothers avidly, looking for signs of all sorts. Inmore remote times, we sought to determinewhether the visage facing us was a friend orfoe, food or a predator. In more recent times,we look to determine gender, age, personal-ity, character and degree of familiarity.

“After Kafka,” 2014

Stephen DouglasOil on linen, 38" x 38"

Photo: courtesy the artist

and Bakersfield Museum of Art

“Dream Fish,” 2009, Joanne JulianMonoprint on BFK paper, 40" x 30"

Photo: courtesy Carnegie Art Museum

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