A blue state
S.F. represents at the Orange County Museum's California Biennial, and reaches from Baja to Vancouver.

By Glen Helfand

GOING SOUTH FROM Los Angeles, the road to the Orange County Museum of Art – the San Diego Freeway – is bracketed by car lots, two Ikeas, and the John Wayne Airport. The land is generally flat, and the museum itself, in upscale Newport Beach, is almost hidden between condominiums, office buildings, and Fashion Island mall. Here's a quintessential California landscape, a solvent suburb, with comfortable distances between things and an enduring 1970s architectural style. The overall package is both drab and oddly inspiring.

A large banner hangs from the museum's stone facade: "We Buy Scalps," it reads, in stylish sans serif letters. The unexpectedly pointed phrase, in this locale, suggests a barbaric plastic surgery practice as much as a historical reminder that American Indians were here long before any shopping center. The fact that this is a piece by Rigo 23, whose murals are San Francisco landmarks, tips toward the latter interpretation. It also signifies that the 2004 California Biennial is an adventurous affair.

The exhibition, well worth the commuter-style schlepp, showcases 28 young artists based mostly in Los Angeles and well-represented San Francisco. In doing so, it suggests the collapsing infrastructure of our state may, ironically, be good for our art. Cocurator Elizabeth Armstrong's catalog introduction acknowledges West Coast tensions between liberals and conservatives, rich and poor, green cards and charge cards. "Even considering that such dichotomies are inevitably oversimplifications, it's no wonder that so much provocative art is produced here," she writes.

The Cali Biennial's paradoxes, often involving appearances and actualities, begin in the lobby, where L.A.-based Sean Duffy offers an actual Geo Metro that he's titled International Playboy. Aside from the shiny white enamel paint job, it's the antithesis of a sports car. It's also something of a stage set: half the car, which has been dismantled save for the exterior, is held up by thin wood supports. A careful selection of CDs, including The Smiths, is visible on the floor beneath the passenger seat. Nearby, Marco Brambilla presents a bracing three-channel video installation in which a quartet of young male gamers, mostly Asian immigrants in Garden Grove, play the apocalyptic, you-against-the-world video game, or nightmare, Half-Life. Their steely expressions, accompanied by shoot-'em-up footage from the game, betray an intensity that goes beyond virtual thrills. L.A.-based Kaz Oshiro shows what at first appear to be food court garbage cans, microwave ovens, and a bank of Peavey amps – actually, his acrylic paintings on canvas join together to create 3-D trompe l'oeils. It's a Hollywood trick, but one that's almost impossible not to be seduced by. Kinda like California itself.

The expansive show forms a cohesive vision that focuses on transparent, enduring California dreams. There's a generous selection of Libby Black's full-size paper-and-hot-glue Louis Vuitton luggage, as well as a hot pink Chanel surfboard. There's the rock 'n' roll fantasy of Mads Lynnerup's band project, in which – during the run of the exhibition – he rehearses with a group of O.C. musicians, lured by a classified ad, who've joined together and called themselves Fashion Island. (Fitting the SoCal location, their connections have led to a Roman Coppola-directed rock video.) Amy Franceschini and her design firm, Futurefarmers, plug into the appeal of eco-friendliness as they create entry points for public dialogue about a massive park project long in the making by urban planners. Franchescini's contribution catches a wave between hope and cynicism – can we ever really wriggle free of the ecological delusions and corporate influences that have shaped what we know as California?

Of course, there's a shortage of fully satisfying answers to that question, and in some ways, this very elusiveness is part of West Coast identity. The quandary pervades the thematically related "Baja to Vancouver: The West Coast and Contemporary Art," a traveling exhibition currently at California College of the Arts' Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (which spearheaded the project). The exhibition extends the sense of highway access into an international "coastal corridor" comprising California, Mexico, and Canada. It covers the same paradoxes as the Cali Biennial and includes a couple of the same artists – painter Brian Calvin, videomaker Kota Ezawa – but it conveys a more laid-back vibe. Delia Brown's smooth soul video Pastorale kicks off the proceedings with a languid Laurel Canyon feeling that's difficult to shake.

The expanded geography lets in the verdant nature and different psychology of the Pacific Northwest. In structure, Althea Thauberger's works resemble Lynnerup's Cali Biennial contribution: young female singer-songwriters, again recruited via adverts, collaborate to make short music videos. But there's a greater sense of sincerity, and less cynicism, to Thauberger's project. "Baja to Vancouver" provides a welcome introduction to a group of Vancouver artists, including Thauberger, Brian Jungen, Stan Douglas, and Liz Magor, whose works often examine the history of their region, or the environment behind and beyond cityscapes. On the southern end of parameters, Tijuana artists Yvonne Venegas, Marcos Ramirez "Erre," and Torolab bring bracing ironies to their visions of middle-class weddings, art-world positioning, and global survival, respectively.

While there are numerous standouts in this show – Michele O'Marah's two-channel video White Diamond and Agent Orange; Matt McCormick's short-film urban survey The Subconscious Art of Grafitti Removal, Larry Sultan's ever thematically flexible porn-set photographs – and it suggests a guided exploration of regionalism, "Baja to Vancouver" is more satisfying when taken as a snapshot survey of what five West Coast curators agreed on as strong work made in their geographical parameters. After all, it's not easy to corral a whole city into a single identity, much less a varied coastline. And as we well know, the people who live here can be a mercurial bunch, but you gotta love 'em.

California Biennial runs through Jan. 9, 2005, Orange County Museum of Art, 850 San Clemente Dr., Newport Beach. (949) 759-1122, www.ocma.net. 'Baja to Vancouver: The West Coast and Contemporary Art' runs through Dec. 11. Tues., 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Wed. and Fri.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; Thurs., 11 a.m.-7 p.m., Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, California College of the Arts, 1111 Eighth St., S.F. Free. (415) 551-9210, www.wattis.org.