All You Can Eat
At Bunny Gunner, Thru March
11
By: Stacy Davies
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One of the feelings a great art show always elicits
is a yearning for more art: sometimes the show is so wonderful
that you just can’t get enough, other times, you just
haven’t found that one piece to connect with—and
looking for art that speaks to us is why most of us go to
see art shows in the first place.
Susie and Juan have taken care of all of the above for you
in their new buffet-styled show, a free-for-all of over
100 pieces that cover every wall and fill every corner in
their petite gallery. The guidelines were basic—no
theme, each piece must be 5x7 or smaller, and each artist
could submit up to ten pieces—and the result is truly
an artistic smorgasbord of color, shape and content of everything
from Shag-styled bikini babes and wistful desert scenes
to ceramic tiles and construction paper.
Manuel Ortega’s dual Mickey Mouse wood panels strip
away the warm and fuzzy Steamboat Willie façade and
give us a somewhat possessed and possibly anarchist rodent
instead. Amy Bystedt offers up five funky “Polaroid”
pictures of vintage suitcases photographed in random landscapes—under
a bridge, on a grassy knoll, on a city street—as if
the poor little luggage has lost its way, or perhaps has
finally decided to travel alone (no more waiting in the
hotel room for some dreary human!). Photography artists
Leslie Brown and Sally Egan also go retro—Brown with
a series of colored pencil treated pics of rockabilly chicks
at a salon, heads under hairdryers and gossip flowing like
beer, and Egan with a hilarious set of “JC Penny Portrait
Studio”-type shots, you know, the kind that have both
a frontal smiling face shot and a three-fourths pensive
one superimposed up in the corner? Except that Egan put
her three-fourths shots in sparkly orange wine glasses adding
yet another layer of comedic kitsch.
Other notable pieces include Sarah Riedel’s four-toned
cutouts of an angst-ridden woman, Finishing School’s
black ski mask mini-mobiles (doesn’t everyone need
a terrorist dangling from their rearview mirror?) and Peter
Owens architectural graphite and blocked color drawings
of industrial landscape and buildings. There really is something
for everyone in this show—and a great overall collection
of interesting and thought-provoking pieces. There’s
also some high-calorie gluttonous fun, and what else would
you expect with a title like this? (Stacy Davies)
All You Can Eat at Bunny Gunner, 266 W. Second St., Pomona,
(909) 868-2808; www.bunnygunner.com. Open Tues.–Sat.,
10AM–7PM. Thru March 11. Free |
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