Norman Korpi at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art

There are several very good reasons why Norman Korpi's paintings of sunsets should suck. He was one of the cast members of the very first season of MTV's The Real World, and you don't really expect anything worthwhile to come from one of those kids who got famous for sitting around arguing about which housemate is the most obnoxious. Plus, paintings of sunsets fall somewhere between crashing waves and sad clowns on the scale of hopeless clichés. But Korpi's "Twilight" series, currently on display at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art as part of the "Alternate Views" show, is genuinely impressive stuff. "Golden Arches" features a commonplace SoCal image, a McDonald's sign and a few palm trees before a setting sun. But Korpi has transformed it into a scene of pulpy, noirish beauty. This is the kind of sky that things happen in front of - people fall in love, hearts are broken, scores are settled. Looking at it, you can see why all the pretty young things are drawn out here. But you can also see why so many of them get lost here, and never find their way back home.

Alternate Views @ the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art
117 North Sycamore,
Santa Ana, CA 92701
August 1st-30th 2008
Admission is free

Edwin Abbott's 1884 cult classic sci-fi novella Flatland follows a (literal) square, a humble citizen of the 2D world that gives the story its name. Mr Square is stunned to discover the spheres and pyramids of the third dimension (or Spaceland), and the story ends with the square as a heretic, imagining still more possible dimensions. Al Held had a lot in common with that square; he began his career with resolutely 2D work in the traditional, abstract expressionist mold, but as the decades passed he moved from Flatland to Spaceland, filling his canvases with shapes that pulse with their own strange energy. 1985's "West End" is like peeking through the window of a modernist apartment where a noisy party for abstract objects is in full swing, with purple arches flirting with pinkish triangles as yellow swirls eavesdrop. Held died in 2005, with Flatland a distant memory, Spaceland conquered and still more dimensions waiting to be discovered.

Al Held: The Evolution of Style at the University Art Museum, College of the Arts
California State University, Long Beach
1250 Bellflower Boulevard
Long Beach, CA 90840
562.985.5761
June 26–August 10, 2008

Admitting that you admired a Pageant of the Masters show is the kind of thing that can (and arguably should) get an art critic strung up by the thumbs. The Pageant of the Masters is just a big, crazy, ridiculous mess, any way you look at it. But it is also a spectacle worthy of the court of the Medicis. You spend the evening ping-ponging back and forth between awe and tedium, oohing and ahhing when you're not too busy wondering what the heck's the point of it all. Imagine all the (probably literal) blood, sweat and tears that went into just the painstaking recreation of Edgar Degas' "Le Cafe Concert aux Ambassadeurs." If you think this is pure kitsch, try re-framing it as extreme performance art; three ladies crusted with paint, wearing stiff and itchy costumes, posed onstage as they desperately clench every muscle and try not to look like living human beings. Beautiful, shmeautiful - that's some Matthew Barney shit, right there.

Pageant of the Masters at the Festival of Arts
650 Laguna Canyon Road
Laguna Beach, CA 92651
949-494-1145

The "Supermarket" show at the Peter Blake Gallery is aptly named, offering more tasty goodies than you'd find on the shelves of a Trader Joe's. You've got everything from the heavy metal furniture of Cheryl Ekstrom to Jeffrey Krueger's luscious landscapes to the glimmery, inexplicably potent planets of Lita Albaquerque. But Jorg Dubin's "Twins On a Green Chair" is the piece that knocks you flat with its queasy, unromantacized sexiness. Two ruddy, annoyed-looking, attractive-ish, middle-aged women with '70s hair stare out at you, one wearing a man's shirt, one joylessly flashing her bra. They are the fantasy of a billion straight men across the globe: two blond twins, waiting for it. But they are the reality of that fantasy, as two sisters sit and don't look at each other, wondering what the hell they're doing here together, what the hell they're doing here with a loser like you. You can feel the guilt in the room, the guilt that makes it all just a bit more alluring. It calls to mind a line from the late George Carlin: "I never had a perfect 10, but I've had two 5's in a night." These girls are 5's, you're a 3 at best, and you all add up to a lucky 13.

Peter Blake Gallery
326 N. Coast Highway
Laguna Beach, CA 92651
(949) 376-9994

Making a real woman up as a Barbie doll would seem to be a pretty played out art world gimmick. After all, generations of art school kids have gotten passing grades by slapping a blond wig on one of their pals and snapping a few quick photos the night before finals.

But there is something about Andrej Glusgold's photographic piece "Laura" that stops you cold. She leans against the wall of a corridor that's covered with way too many wallpaper samples. Her legs are stretched out stiffly before her. Her big, kinky '80s 'do is going every which way and her oversized high heels look like they were clumsily jammed onto her feet by by some little girl the size of King Kong. And most horrifying of all, her face is fixed in a classic Barbie grin, dead-eyed yet paradoxically desperate to please.

The "Take a Chance" show at the OMC Gallery features plenty of interesting young artists who use photos to create surreal illustrations. But Glusgold's "Laura" is the girl who haunts you. Everything about the image suggest a doll whose owner grew up long ago. Poor Laura has been left to sit in her toy-box forever, waiting for a playmate who will never come again.

The OMC Gallery for Contemporary Art
7561 Center Ave #32
Huntington Beach, CA 92647
714-421-0476
Open Wed - Sat 2 - 7 p.m.

Pop Rocks

The art of OC native danyol is kind of like one of those fizzy little indie bands you have to be in just the right mood for. If you're in the wrong mood, his stuff is so lacking in depth that your eye bounces off it. But if you're in the right mood, it'll make you and your eyeballs very happy.

His mixed media piece, "she creates her own reality," illustrates so much of what's right (or, if you're nasty, so much of what's wrong) with Danyol's stuff. Against a canvas crusted with gooey gobs of salmon paint, a wistful-looking little girl stands, her dress (and skin) made of bits of old newspapers and maps and money. Primary colors are splashed randomly across her body, like she's lost a paintball tournament. Maybe there's nothing particularly revolutionary here, but your eye gets captured by those cheery Crayola colors, and the lumpy textures just beg you to run your greasy hands across the thing.

danyol: At The Seams @ The Box Gallery
765 Saint Clair Ste. B, Costa Mesa
(714) 724-4633
Open through July 19th

Upon arriving at the OMC Gallery for Contemporary Art in Huntington Beach, I must admit I was surprised. On day two of the gallery’s "Good Photo" exhibition, I found myself not outside the impressive walls of a contemporary art gallery, but somewhere in Germany. Nestled in the heart of the Old World Village in Huntington Beach, the quaintly painted walls and cobbled sidewalk of the OMC Gallery would have slipped right past me had I not been looking for it.

Once inside, the art did not disappoint. The photos themselves were, well, good. German photographer Rolf Goellnitz, who spent the afternoon eagerly showing people around, explained that this was the whole point of the show.

I am by no means any kind of authority on contemporary photography, but I found the exhibit enjoyable. I found the colorful prints of Anita V. Bauer and Jonas Guertz particularly so. Both artists seemed to have a style that attempted to be aesthetically pleasing without being so contemporary as to be incomprehensible.

I learned a little about contemporary photography from my visit, too. I am now aware that contemporary photography appears to focus on human environments, and remains that are nowadays largely untitled. And despite (because of?) the odd appearance of the gallery, I had fun looking at the photographs, many of which I would have happily bought if I had the money.

Speaking of my empty pockets, one of the greatest assets the gallery had going for it was the free admission, which made visiting the OMC Gallery one more free thing to do on a Sunday afternoon in Orange County.

The next exhibition at the OMC Gallery for Contemporary Art in Huntington Beach will be TAKE A CHANCE: YOUNG ARTISTS AT THE GALLERY, from June 15 to Aug. 31.

View a photo slide show of the exhibit here.