No, not
Transformers
as in the Michael Bay-directed, CGI-laden, action-packed feature film based on an animated TV series that was based on a line of***image2*** Hasbro toys that, in fact, was based on an earlier line of Japanese toys-but transformers in the sense of the Cyndi Conn-curated, CCA-hosted, chrome-limned art exhibition based on assertions about visual culture that are based on lowrider car customizing culture that, in fact, is based on pachuco fashions of the 1930s and '40s. The exhibition,
Chopped Chromed Customized
, inaugurates the freshly remodeled Muñoz Waxman Gallery, the first step in a LEED-certified, multimillion-dollar overhaul of facilities at the Center for Contemporary Arts.
Chopped Chromed Customized
is not, as would be ideal, wholly transformative for viewers in and of itself. However, it offers enough layered manifestations of transformation and allusions to metamorphosis that it could serve as an appropriate venue for a Buddhist retreat or a corporate re-branding seminar. Artists Liz Cohen, Alex Harris, Rubén Ortíz Torres, Carol Sarkisian and the late Luís Jiménez are each represented by works that offer different kinds of entre into transformation and customization. Thematically, then, it fits with the whole CCA redux vibe effused by the new gallery and, taken individually, the work is uniformly potent. But the exhibition's strengths also are
challenged by difficulties, the first of which was characterized in a speech by Dr. Al Waxman (the gallery is named for his wife, Margerita Muñoz Waxman), on the occasion of the gallery's grand opening.
Waxman spoke of how he and his wife had left the pleasant confines of Aspen, Colo., in favor of the greater diversity of Santa Fe. Indeed, when Margerita Waxman herself spoke, she used her native Spanish to accentuate her feelings on the occasion, which was a deservedly celebratory one. The trouble was us, the assembled throng, and our marked homogenization. Given the content of the exhibition-the nearby saturated frame of a Harris photograph surrounding the San José de Gracia Church in Las Trampas, NM, with the plush interior of a customized ride, the hash-dashed Jiménez fantasy of car coitus-diversity was most comfortably represented on the wall and safely studied from afar.
Ortíz Torres, who lives with some success between the worlds of high art and custom-car culture, claims he sympathizes with the liberal view that the exhibition ought to incorporate or draw "the other"-that is, the lowriders and the car buffs-but suggests such a thing will never happen on any significant level. And nor, he says, should it: The two cultures don't need each other and it's a fantasy to imagine them sitting around, drinking beer, grilling burgers and relating to their mutual appreciation of candied paint finishes and chrome accents. He may be correct, but for the exhibition to fail to address the living culture from which it draws inspiration, at least on any tacit and tangible level, puts an anthropological hush on the gallery, as though the objects on offer are interpretive displays representing a long-past people, rather than iterations of a constantly evolving contemporary tribe. It would not be surprising to find the word "Croatoan" in gothic script. The best compensation for this deficiency is a deft use of older works by Harris, Jiménez and Ortíz Torres that, at least, demonstrate the scope and duration of the conversation around how two distinct visual cultures interact.
The new gallery space is as cavernous as it is beautiful and, therefore, a challenging room within which to arrange an exhibition. Ortíz Torres' work is effectively diminutized and his two video pieces are shown in a confined space that forces an inappropriate intimacy. The general weight of distribution causes the gallery to list and Sarkisian's small, obsessive sculptures to be subsumed by pure space. There is significant public brouhaha regarding Cohen's use of herself as a tarted-up bikini model, eye candy for a custom car that she herself is building.
That, however, is a red herring, a nonissue largely generated by old guard feminists whose politics have been left as dusty as their record collections. Cohen's massive, 16-by-20-foot inkjet-on-vinyl prints are coyly manipulated incursions into pinup aesthetics and gender perceptions. As doctored documentary images from an ongoing project called "Body Work," the images capture her progress in transforming an East German Trabant into a Chevy El Camino, utilizing the visual signifiers of the magazines and posters marketed to customizing enthusiasts. Cohen's efforts, including her misguidedly maligned images, effect sharp investigations into the nature of transformation, whether the subject be car, sculpture, digital image, human body or-most poignantly-how an object or person inside the process of change is viewed from without. By situating Cohen's work on one end of the gallery and having it surround the massive, Mexican-romantic-pop of the "Southwest Pieta," a sculpture by Jiménez, a powerhouse undulation between sub-cultural iconographies is created and it washes back and forth like a tide.
If one can escape the undertow, Ortíz Torres' "Bad Creation," and the nearly hidden video piece that accompanies it, are among the most satisfying works on view. "Bad Creation" is a toy-sized, sculptural maquette of a man remotely manipulating the hydraulics of a lowrider that has lost its relevance as a car, becoming instead a perpetually morphing object, a real-time interactive sculpture. In the video, a digital animation is roughly pasted onto live footage in order to enact the fantasy. The resulting low-brow choreography of endless, transformative evolution successfully subverts issues of culture and identity and raises instead the idea of an absurd and perfect creative utopia.
Chopped Chromed Customized
isn't perfect, but its existence is satisfying, if larval. With any vehicle undergoing the transformation from daily driver to trophy winner, there's going to be an awkward stage in which the paintwork is done, but the wheels aren't on yet.
Chopped Chromed Customized
Through Oct. 21
Center for Contemporary Arts
1050 Old Pecos Trail
982-1338
