Art in the Antelope Valley: 4<40 Four Antelope Valley Artists Under the Age of Forty

Under the Age of Forty

@ Lancaster Museum/ Art Gallery

44801 N. Sierra Highway

Lancaster, CA 93534

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Show Runs from October 31, 2009 to January 3, 2010

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Artists showing: Sarah Donaldson, Larissa Nickel, Nicolas Shake, Laurel Jean Siler

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Going into the 4 under 40 show, I knew each artist showing would be under forty years old. Each artist would be an Antelope Valley resident. Beyond that I was unaware of any connections tying the artists together.

Prior to heading to the LM/AG, I encountered several doubters who asked questions as to why a show would be put together like this. It's arbitrary, they said. The artists might as well have nothing in common, they said, if age is the only criteria. Shouldn't quality be the criteria?

I tried to explain that the art scene in the Antelope Valley has long been dominated by artists over the age of forty. Also, things in the AV are changing and the museum (thank you, LM/AG) is helping to move that change along.

Between Lancaster, Quartz Hill, and the Lakes, we've jumped from one art gallery in the Antelope Valley to at least five. Where the subject of so much AV artwork has historically been poppies, Joshua Trees, and landscapes, we are now seeing a diverse, personally expressive set of subjects - and artists.

There is a wide diversity exhibited in the four artists in the 4 show at the LM/AG: diversity of style, of media, and of subject. This variety, however, effectively combats the worries about the arbitrariness of connection between the four artists. Despite the different modes and vision of these AV artists, there is a great similarity of thematic interest in the works of the show. Issues of identity are at the heart of the works of each artist.

The theme of "identity" feels very apropos in this 4 show as an example of local changes and the movement toward art that is contemporary and which comments on issues that are cultural, individual, and nuanced. The art on display at the show is not decorative, as Antelope Valley art has long tended to be. Much of the work on display here isn't even pretty.

This was the first surprise of the show. I marveled at how the art work on display seemed so disinterested in traditional aesthetics.

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The topic of identity is a difficult subject for explanation or discussion, harried as it is by subjectivity, shifting planes of cultural and personal circumstances and shifting cultural and personal values. The difficulty of clear, clean expression on the subject of identity makes it a natural artistic concept, ripe for creative exploration. The LM/AG show presents four artists who are willing to dive into the fray and articulate the conflicts and difficulties of identity.

What emerges from their efforts are works demonstrating a number of challenges that the artists find set against them in the pursuit of identity in an age of fracture, post-history, and dramatic inter-connections. However, it is open to question just how much of the work on display is personally related to the artists and how much is performance of artistic performance.

A word on the artists: Under forty, these are adults who are artists - a profession in the most literal sense - they are still proving themselves and establishing a foothold in an uncertain world of art. They are also, naturally, citizens of America, a nation in flux today, one that celebrates simplicity in art or, in a harsher tone, celebrates non-art.

The works in this show are certainly art. That is the strongest statement the show makes.

Standing in the LM/AG, turning in a slow circle, the realization dawned on me that I was in the midst of a real art show; not a pretty one, but a gritty, real one.

These four artists are each digging into issues of identity and each comes up with a different product.

Nickel has installation pieces on display that challenge the viewer to construct meaning. She gives you the raw parts and seems to say, "here, make this mean something." But it isn't pithy or poor. The work is coincident with itself, meshed, integral, yet there is something missing. The missing part is, of course, the explanation. That is what the viewer must provide. "Identify me," is what is says while it simultaneously defies easy categorization or even simple naming.

The work is difficult.

Siler's works are based on canvas, which brings them loosely into the scope of tradition. However, she immediately breaks with tradition in its use of little plastic army men glued to the canvas, as well as yarn. Her works are, again, not pretty. They are involved in the portrayal of the un-capitalized American dream that is youth culture, consumer culture, and the set of shared conventional aspirations of our country.

Her work is a cacophony unto itself. Part of the noise of these works comes from references the artists makes on placards in her section. Both Siler and Nickel refer to 20^th century artists, famous and obscure, and set their work in direct reference to these modernists. Further complicating the notions of identity that were already sliced up and laid out like a game of pick-up-sticks, these references reify a sense that these four artists under forty are challenged in the construction of their own identities as young artists. Their work is an outcropping of their own angst and anxiety as much as it is an attempt to challenge public notions of personhood, manhood, womanhood, and identity matrices of America.

Nicolas Shake's paintings do take on an aesthetic beauty, where the other works of the show take up an "aesthetic" of ideas.

Shake paints self-portraits that feature himself in various guises and odd poses: standing in front of a fan with a cape on, squatting with his shirt pulled up over his head, balancing stacks of dishware on his head. These paintings set the individual in an environment and/or in poses that create a tension of forces. The man in the paintings is always the same, but we get the sense, seeing him in varying degrees of abnormal or uncomfortable postures, that he is not allowed to simply be himself.

These paintings are, for me, the most satisfying works in the show. At least as interesting semantically as the works of the other three artists in the LM/AG show, Shake demonstrates a subtle (personal) coherence that the other artists either eschew or do not posses. His work suggest an integral self set against a world that requires myriad compromises where much of the other art on display indicate interior worlds at war, conflicts that precede the formation of identity as well as an inclination to undermine the very notion of non-referential individual being.

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Of the four artists showing, Sarah Donaldson is apparently least engaged in notions of beauty.

Her works consist of large canvases (something like six feet by six feet) with pencil drawings of interior spaces (living rooms) and sparse, sporadic spots of paint.

Placards near the works explain her goals, which are concerned with the symbols and symbolisms of daily life, the meaning of these, and the idea of these symbolic relationships as fixtures in our society (e.g., America & its flag). At least that's how I understood the works. There is a good chance I am wrong.

She has one piece in the show that is a painting. I'm sure about that. There is paint on the whole canvas. It is a witty piece depicting a fish market with smiley faces on the fish.

With the exception of this single painting, Donaldson's work is baffling. Set in context with the rest of the show, her work seems to partake of the avante garde challenge as to what constitutes fine art. The viewer is forced to work at understanding what the art is about. But it is not a pretty or a simple task to understand. The explanations provided on the placards articulate a notion of symbolism that the works themselves do not convey. The works are raw and rather ugly. Without the wider context of the other works in the show, Donaldson's statement would be lost in the vacuum of the many empty, unpainted sections of her canvases.

In the situation of this AV show, the viewer is challenged to connect the dots between the works of four artists. Donaldson becomes, in this context, an artist voicing self-assertion, one who speaks to a truth about herself and her mind that only she can see. She is the artist staking her claim to the world of art and ideas. Her words are clear but her voice is uncertain.

This uncertainty is what connects each of the four artists in the show, to some extent.

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4 Under 40 is a thought provoking show featuring four young artists. The LM/AG is playing its part in helping to grow the new dynamic of the arts scene in the Antelope Valley. These four artists are doing their part as well.

It's up to the audience to make it mean something.

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p.s. We are the audience.
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Visit the LM/AG website for more information on this and upcoming shows.
See more Antelope Valley art reviews: 1, 2.