ALLEGORICAL RE/VISIONS by Peter Frank.
LA Weekly Art Pick: December 8 - 14, 1997

Until recently, allegory, the extension of metaphor into narrative (notably narrative whose meaning is recognized as a ritual of social and psychological convention), has been relegated to popular arts like movies and novels. But these are postmodern times, so fine art, too, can be allegorically driven. The work in "Allegorical Re/Visions" actually adds one more layer to the mix, that of the historical - the history-book historical and the nostalgic historical. Charles Garabedian is represented here, of course, as is Ruth Weisberg (who helped thematize the exhibition) and John Frame. The other artists included are less well-known as out-and-out allegorists, but damned if not every one reveals him- or herself as a riveting, beguiling teller of tales. Terry Braunstein's pictorial collages, here combined with 3-D objects, have never seemed more profound, nor have Weekly staffer Tom Knechtel's intricately drawn multilayered fantasies. The aura of oddness hovering about Wes Christensen's tiny drawings of domestic scenes can now be understood as an aura of ulterior significance, and Ken Gonzales-Day's Recovered Pages From the Bone-grass Boy: The Secret Banks of the Conejos River evolves well beyond artful montage into fanciful but eerily credible historicity. Carole Caroompas, Charlene Roth, Ron Rizk, Kerry James Marshall (the one ex-Angeleno), and the team of John and Toti M. O'Brien and Steve Roden also contribute importantly, but the show's pièce de résistance is the interactive multipartite video projection, Seven Prophecies, of Stuart Bender and Angelo Funicelli - a riveting stretch of multimedia whose scope as well as content is nothing short of operatic.