Dream on
Three artists entertainingly deflate Left Coast mythologies.

By Glen Helfand

CALIFORNIA'S TROUBLED. As the rest of the country seems to crawl toward recovery, we've lagged behind. The state's values are geographically split between liberal and conservative, an ideological fault line dividing north and south, east and west. But the distance between those points isn't so great it can't be limned by a shiny new Hummer with an expensive, massive tank of petrol.

Hummers Always Have the Right of Way is the title of a modest, knowing drawing by Libby Black in "California Dreamin' " a timely show devoted to our beleaguered chunk of the West Coast. The image of Arnold's favorite gas-guzzler that Black re-creates from a magazine ad is a civilian version of a Tonka-yellow military vehicle, an icon of blind excess that's so wrong for the times yet so indicative of them. The Hummer, and all it stands for, is but one example of how the dream here has gone sour.

Black, along with pun-prone sculptor-conceptualist Michael Arcega and performance prankster Lee Walton, was asked to address the state of the state for this refreshingly boisterous Union Square showcase at Heather Marx Gallery. With an appealing mixture of slick, funky, and witty approaches, each artist applies a slightly skewed filter to the task. The myths of the state have been fueled by the entertainment industry – and the fact that so many cheesy reality shows are set in Los Angeles suburbs – making the California dream ubiquitously American. That dream exists everywhere but here, where dystopia chic first reared its trendsetting head. It may also be that the dream is inextricably linked to its opposite, the California nightmare: the fault zones, wildfires, racial tensions, budget crises, deceptive ballot initiatives, and ominous movie star politicians.

Black's humbly appealing works on paper peg the rickety stage-set qualities of consumer culture, rendering them in the daydreaming form of doodles or craft projects. Her version of the infamous Beverly Hills Hotel is an alluring, tropical combo of green and pink, while her paper plaid-bottomed Burberry Skateboard and a rose-colored Chanel Surfboard are both hollow sculptures that conflate lifestyle indicators of high fashion and trendy athleticism. Her most biting contribution here, however, is a drawing of a pricey Union Square department store. Its exterior, clad in diamond-shaped tiles, serves as an opportunity for the artist to engage in pattern play, while at the bottom of the composition, she positions a gaggle of PETA protesters with antifur picket signs, although they are mightily overshadowed by the architecture. The fitting title: Neiman Carcass.

Arcega also uses socially conscious wordplay in a delightful series of drawings, each made from strands of human hair. They're concise iterations of regional icons, named with the panache of those cleverly christened hair salons – Conan the Barber, Hairb Caen, Hairetic (Anton LaVey, Church of Satan), Hairoin, among them. The ends of the hair aren't affixed to the paper and serve as flyaway mark-making. He also contributes an ambitious sculptural project composed of balsa-wood architectural models depicting the insidious network of buildings tied in to the fast-food industry – meat processing plants, paper mills, flavor factories – each linked by threads that evoke electrical or telephone wires. Titled Gross National Product, the piece is essentially a diagram of Eric Schlosser's industry exposé Fast Food Nation. Arcega's undertaking is impressive, and though the structures seem like those drab buildings you pass on a road trip along the 5, they're rooted in a national rather than regional dialogue.

But then again, the obsessive pursuit of fame, fortune, and perfect sporting experiences is also a national pastime. Walton employs witty actions, here offering a video document of a months-long golf game, played one shot a day at Lincoln Park. He also shows a Web site (www.leewalton.com) that democratically solicits images of California from visitors – and even a grid of unscratched lottery tickets, a conceptually interesting yet visually inert evocation of glamorous possibilities of new wealth. His most incisive piece is also the most cleverly satisfying in how it downgrades the allure of show business. Titled The Extra, the piece is an elaborate pitch letter, addressed to hip young indie director Sofia Coppola, in which the artist poses as an "everyman" extra ready for hire. His letter is on display along with staged photographs of himself eating a slice of pizza, walking down Madison Avenue (the former S.F.-based artist recently moved to New York City), and gabbing on his cell phone. A series of genre-specific film clips features Walton in fleeting background appearances. He's the nudnick at the bar, a pedestrian in the subway platform, a silent coworker. The notion that someone would devote this much time to such a thankless, low-paying job attests to the way fame has lost its elevating allure and simply exists as a platform for any Average Joe. Maybe that's what California dreamin' has sadly become – not a fantasy, but a prosaic and slightly pathetic reality.

'California Dreamin' ' runs through April 28, Tues.-Fri., 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Heather Marx Gallery, 77 Geary, S.F. (415) 627-9111. www.heathermarxgallery.com.