Vision, Reach and Grasp

The best exhibitions of 1996 were characterized by independent thinking, new twists on familiar older material and the chance to see work by exciting younger artists rethinking the basic structures of art.

There are two worrisome trends. One is that the good shows were concentrated in just a few institutions--and that none were mounted by the former Newport Harbor Art Museum (now part of the Orange County Museum of Art), which was the premiere art venue in the county less than a decade ago.

The other trend is otherwise worthy shows with nonexistent, inadequate or poorly conceived accompanying essays--the “glue” that binds a show together and helps viewers understand the curator’s premise and the context of the works.

The encouraging thing is that, while the top two exhibitions involved major grants and years of toil, others were put together with dispatch, on a shoestring. It’s been said many times, but brainpower and shoe leather (or gasoline) account for a lot of the glory, not necessarily big budgets.

The curators with the widest overview of what’s out there, the energy to go after it and the creativity to reinterpret it persuasively are the ones who consistently get the best results.

The Very Best

* “The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism.” Laguna Art Museum, Jan. 26-April 21. (Guest curator: Susan Landauer.) Top show of the year because it not only involved assembling a strong group of paintings for a pioneering museum survey, but it also offered a compellingly argued case for looking at these works in a strikingly new way--not as secondhand smoke from the New York School but as independent explorations in their own right.

* “John McLaughlin: Western Modernism/Eastern Thought.” Laguna Art Museum, July 19-Oct. 6. (Guest curator: Susan Larsen.) It took 20 years for this seminal modernist who spent his later years in Dana Point to get a full-fledged retrospective, but this sensitively interpreted assembly of his spare paintings traced the development of his lonely rigor and Zen-influenced approach, which requires the viewer to work out visual koans disguised as rectilinear bands of paint.

* “Fred Tomaselli: The Urge to Be Transported.” Huntington Beach Art Center, June 29-Sept. 1. (Curators: Outgoing center curator Marilu Knode with Renny Pritikin of the Center for the Arts Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco.) Gorgeous patterns and images evocative of retinal effects and synaptic activity in the brain, all made with various types of legal and illegal psychoactive drugs. With a fine catalog essay locating the work in the classic vein of art as a transformative experience.

Other Special Ones

* “TRANS/INTER/POST: HYBRID SPACES.” UC Irvine Art Gallery, Oct. 16-Nov. 23. (Curator: Outgoing acting director Pamela Bailey.) A baker’s dozen visually compelling works that take on aspects of contemporary life in an open-ended way. All it lacked was an essay to help put them in context.

* “Absence.” Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, March 18-April 18. (Curator: Maggi Owens.) An intriguing, sophisticated premise--art about the tension between knowledge and experience--and strong work by an extraordinarily varied group of artists made this one of the best shows in recent memory at a gallery that’s always worth a visit.

* “An Embarrassment of Riches.” Huntington Beach Art Center, Sept. 21-Nov. 17. (Guest curator: Marilu Knode.) A provocative survey of work by 12 contemporary artists who cultivate an ersatz lusciousness with cheap or curious materials.

* “Joseph Havel.” Huntington Beach Art Center, April 13-June 16. (Guest curator: Peter Doroshenko.) Perceptual riddles of a high order, accompanied by a particularly cogent essay by Times contributor David Pagel. Accompanied by “Look Busy: Michael Gonzalez” (curator: Marilu Knode), another small but top-notch show recalling the lamented “New California Artist” series at Newport Harbor.

* “Wrestling With the Sublime: Contemporary German Art in Southern California.” Cal State Fullerton Main Art Gallery, Nov. 10-Dec. 12. (Student curators: Linda Centell and Ewa Kirsch.) An ambitious effort, chock-full of work by three generations of significant German-born artists rarely seen here, but marred by a weak premise and a woefully inadequate catalog essay.

Kirsch also curated “A Moment of Congruency: Selected Polish Art from the MOCA (Los Angeles) Collection” for the West Gallery at Cal State Fullerton last winter, a small show offering a rare glimpse of art made by members of an intensely intellectual culture that was isolated from the world during the Cold War.

* “Seeking Immortality: Chinese Tomb Sculpture from the Schloss Collection.” Bowers Museum of Cultural Art. Oct. 6-March 16. (Curator: Janet Baker.) A viewer-friendly tour of hundreds of years of sprightly funerary sculptures invoking the earthly lives of deceased peasants, officials, military men and nobility. Missing, however, is a sense of the epic sweep of history involved.

“On and Off the Wall.” Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, Sept. 3-Oct. 11. (Curators: Richard Turner, Maggi Owens.) Inventive pieces by well- and lesser-known Southern California artists explored various ways of incorporating the wall in the work.

Best Community Show

* “Dead on the Wall: Grateful Dead and Deadhead Iconography From 30 Years on the Run.” Huntington Beach Art Center, June 29-Sept. 1. (Curator: Tyler Stallings.) A timely idea, carried out with creativity, historical perspective and a joyous, anarchic spirit.