Gaber’s Forceful Paintings Delve Into Culture’s Psyche

Harley Gaber’s visual art was last seen locally in 1985 at the now-closed Photography Gallery. There, he exhibited Polaroids, photo collages and representations of his involvement with avant-garde music, a domain in which he has distinguished himself over a 25-year period that includes two album-length recordings of his compositions.

Gaber’s activity in visual media dates back only a decade and, until recently, consisted mostly of the types of work in the 1985 show. Thus the unmitigated style of paintings on view in his exhibition at the Gwydion Gallery in La Jolla is new to him.

The show bears the enigmatic title “The Imperial Army Marches Backward in History.” The major works on view are large canvases bearing frightful, often freakish images of Buddhas, witch doctors, embryos and gooey faces. Their style recalls the figurative expressions (a la DeKooning) produced in quantity in the United States and Europe during the 1950s and early ‘60s, as evidenced by the paint slashed in thick blobs onto some of the canvases and, in an apparent contradiction, applied to others with a palette knife in a manner that results in a finicky surface resembling Byzantine mosaic.

Gaber, who lives in La Jolla, describes the paintings as attempts to explore past-life experiences that he feels survive within his psyche. Regardless of whether one believes in such a possibility, the notion, especially when conjoined to the disturbing imagery, tempts invocation of one of the most problematic modes of art appreciation in circulation these days: that of playing amateur psychiatrist, which appears to become more attractive to people the more the art affronts their taste and sense of propriety.

Giving in to this temptation, however, merely sidesteps the challenges that such art poses in favor of the relative safety of systems that try to account for why the artist is being so uncooperative. It also injects the implication that such behavior--that is, such art--is a sign of something “wrong” in the artist’s personality. But this is too easy a way around the work. Gaber’s considerable accomplishments, in music at least, elevate him far above being dismissible as a flake or crackpot.

Furthermore, Gaber’s ferocious imagery, in neat concert with his handling of form, address conflicts and consternations that are symptomatic not only of the workings of a single personality but of contemporary culture in general. This should constitute attractive material for any lively mind, yet psychological systems have few resources capable of responding to the remarkably clumsy yet elegant force of Gaber’s style.

As suggested above, it’s not so much in the paintings that Gaber is particularly successful. These come across as excited first steps into paint and large formats, and seem adolescently strident in both their hyper-worked surfaces and their insistence on conveying what is highly problematic material (the past-life experiences). Although there may be a cult appeal to such imagery and ideology, there’s not much beyond it.

Gaber is much more successful and communicative in a number of smaller, more informal paintings on rice paper that date mostly from this year. A series of such works, titled “I Quattro Fiori” (The Four Flowers), combines black gestural outlines of primitive figures with collage elements taken from fashion magazines.

The resulting images of elegantly made-up lips, fingernails and eyes, conjoined to the crude and visceral figures, offer a surprisingly poignant assessment of the role of artifice and affectation in the ideal images we have of ourselves.

Another group of these painted collages juxtaposes cultural emblems such as a group of cherubs from a Baroque painting or part of a Hindu sculptural frieze with the stark figure outlines. Here, too, basic sensibilities and impulses, symbolized by the crude figures, collide with cultural forms that exist outside the individual, where they dictate the normative terms of what reality is, what life means and how to behave properly.

If an individual starts to ask too many questions about these terms--in other words, doesn’t conform--conflict results. Yet without such conflicts, in the individual and in society, the world would never change.

To assert that the artist’s role is to give form to such conflicts is a bit of a cliche, but it’s an accurate one, except it has things backward. What happens is that artists can’t do anything but play that role. It’s a direct consequence of a serious involvement with art making, a striving to work at that edge where what is faces what’s possible. That can be a very turbulent, uncertain location for the simple reason that time and habit haven’t had the chance to wrap everything up into neat, seamless sets of conventions.

It’s not all chaos out there, however. The third and latest group of paintings and photo-collage reveal Gaber working more confidently and deliberately. The spirit images he pursues so excitedly in the large paintings are evident here, but they are much more accessible and, therefore, much more plausible.

The techniques and expressiveness of Gaber’s earlier efforts come together in this group in a way that suggests he has found a niche in visual form that satisfies his needs as an artist.

One work from this group, a depiction of an Indian in ceremonial dress, is titled “Revelation.” The designation aptly describes the passions and processes of Harley Gaber’s plunge into art making.

The exhibition continues through June 16 at 7825 Fay Ave. For information on gallery hours, call 456-3737.