Full roster at OMA

Oceanside Museum of Art has a full roster of shows right now. You are greeted by 4 huge window creatures with marvelous colors that are repeated in the new striped wall of the foyer which is showing We Can Work It Out: Becky Guttin until Jan 29. The large red carpet which proclaims, “my house is my house” is a theme continued in the large mobile of little wood outlined houses that Guttin has become known for. It is a wonderful way to convert the space into a joyful and welcoming entry.

Turn to the left and for a further riot of color in the show It's Not My Fault: The Art of Everett Peck until Feb 12. Everett Peck who is now in his sixties took up painting just a decade ago after a full life as the creator of Duckman. You will see a reproduction of his workspace and the fantasy dining room table with fully painted furniture and displaying a charming miniature burning log cabin with stone chimney complete with flames. This cartoonist is starting to make some seriously good paintings on view here for the first time.

I was very taken by the show Vantage Point: UCSD Visual Dialogues until Jan 15 because the attempt was to show the establish artists who are faculty member with their selection of emerging artists students. This is a formula that has worked so well for the SD Art Prize and which I would like to see taken up more often. Putting the works in the context of each other was ultimately the most successfully with the collaborative work by Brian Zimmerman and his professor. Anya Gallaccio. The precarious setting of her boulder on his delicate wooden structure was intriguing with so many possible interpretations (for example: her female strength and his male frailty, her lofty and mature ideas and his growing ambition). Marvelous to see this video presentation by Louis Hock with its frosted rectangle moving mysteriously about desert and sea scapes with just a hint of something not quite identifiable and always reminding us of the hand of the artist. Hock has a site specific video cinemural for the Pacific Standard Time Exhibition at the Getty Center in LA right now. The student’s work left me a bit baffled with a very expensive presentation but somehow lacking the punch of holograms that it is depicting. Alida Cervantes shows with Ruben Ortiz-Torres and threatens to overcome the master in this particular painterly figurative style. Her work has developed wonderfully over the years since she was an emerging artist in one of our New Contemporaries exhibitions and now reminds me of Paula Rego, a wonderful Portuguese artist now living in London. It is always a joy to see new works by Ernest Silva and these don’t disappoint. They have his recognizable style but they are more complicated, which is so hard to achieve and still maintain their direct simple charm. The relationship to his student Chris Kardambikis is vague but Kardambikis’ work is a nice distillation of a landscape on newsprint.

Also on view is Parallel Visions: Transitional Youth Academy until Dec 18 and A Matter of Space: Cathy Breslaw showing at the Parker Gallery until Jan 5. (watch the video of her gallery talk.)TheWilliam Glen Crooks exibition begins in mid-December.