East Hampton's Solar Greets 2008 As Brave New World

By Joan Baum

"Geografias en Technicolor VI" by Gonzalo Fuenmayor

Whichever source you credit – Shakespeare's "The Tempest" (V, i) or Aldous Huxley's 1932 satire-fantasy that takes place in 2579 – Solar owner Esperanza León feels confident that viewers of the seven-person show on view in "Brave New World" will get the message, as well as be intrigued and entertained at how differently and cleverly each artist interprets and slyly critiques contemporary culture. In "The Tempest" Miranda cries out in wonder at a brave new world that has such "goodly creatures" in it. Turning that utopian expression on its head, Huxley in "Brave New World" showed just how unlovely the world could be in a politico-techno society that fascistically orders personal lives. At Solar the Latin American artists assembled on the walls and floor play with this theme in startling and distinctive ways.

"Hill" by Alexis Duque

In Alexis Duque's stunning acrylic on canvas drawing "Hill", an almost cartoon Tower of Babel is formed out of a jumble of shacks, the only color being faint-hued pennants – the colors of the Colombian flag – that festoon the degraded tenements in celebratory strings around the mountain, as though this detritus of civilization were a matter of national pride. The dystopian detail is incredible: a wreck, turned over on its side, tires off, graffiti, sludge running out of an ATM, sex shop signs, sink-hole kitchens, broken stairs, angled lampposts, a solar dish that points "sky." Citadel is even more of a hell, doors off hinges, curtains torn, roofs in shards, garbage, the whole an open-cut anthropological cross section. The mound has no top, the slum just rises. On a back wall, "Condominium" satirically depicts with savage wit colorful futuristic condo bubbles in all their insularity and artificiality. They sit astride a decaying monument, a slab of history reduced to ruined huts. That Duque critiques so engagingly is cause for wonder.

In Vargas-Suarez Universal's ballpoint pen and inkjet print on paper "Martian Virus", the brave new world is disturbingly suggested by the picture's sharp division of subject matter and media. The bottom section's frail blue lines have no connection with the upper section which looks like magnified cells, but if this blurry part is intended to represent an astronomy photo, it could easily be inferred that the choice to explore outer space at the expense of attending to needs on earth is diseased.

At first glance Alejandra Villasmil's two water fantasy-mixed media "Chicks of the Sea" pieces - ink, glitter, confetti, stickers, coloring book cutouts, and newsprint Escort ads – may seem out of place in this show, but look again: those glowing, funky mermaids and cartoon sea creatures, including a lusty shark, cavort on a beach that curves away from a sky of slanted parallel gray lines that rain down from a dark cloud (radiation?). As for Darlene Charneco's imaginative mixed media landscape compositions of colored nails and resin nicely composed on wood - plastic, shiny topologies of elliptical islands linked by thread and glowing nail heads, as in "Island of Common Interest" – what is "common" is sameness. Regardless of size, the islands are cut out of the same mold and in the same color. Similarly in "Home of the Garden of Eden", a table sculpture, shows paradise, the promise is of an antiseptic loveliness devoid of people.

"Watery Fantasies" by Alejandra Villasmil

The satire continues: Gonzalo Fuenmayor's "Geografias en Technicolo", mixed media collages in the mode of folk art abstracts - bananas shaped into an open-mouthed King Kong, Zeppelins with colorful ribbons - the whole framed in plexiglass, explore the theme of reversal in the brave new world, where machines soar and nature devours. Nearby Béatrice Coron's "EgoCentriCity" commands attention with its intricate cut-out silhouettes on a Mandala-like painted Tyvek (weather-resistant material). What an assemblage of humanity on this eight-slice wheel (camels, dueling figures, domestic scenes) and how skillfully the artist has designed a shape that seems, but is not, symmetrical. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut might cynically say.

Finally (to note), Arnaldo Morales's floor pièces de résistance must not be resisted. Interactive, phallic sculptural machines -"weapons of mass seduction," the artist calls them. Made out of industrial materials - stainless steel, aluminum, plastic, rubber – "artifacts of a disappearing industry" – "Toy-low" (toilet – sit on it!), "Wassa" (pull the handles, watch the gauge), and "Ron-k", a spindly propeller device that spins when the sculpture is engaged - these beautiful silver designs, each referencing body functions (hello Huxley) are truly resonant of a brave new world that keeps turning but has lost its soul.

Solar is located at 44 Davids Lane, East Hampton, www.artsolar.com. The exhibit runs through Jan. 31. Solar, by the way, is just "Solar." The word "gallery" does not attach itself to León's exhibition space, nor does her name. She wants visitors to feel as if they're coming to her home, she says, which indeed they are, for a relaxed educational and cultural experience and, in "Brave New World", a sobering, reflective one.

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Joan Baum lives in Springs and covers literature and the arts for print and radio.