The Truth downtown
By Lance Vargas

In a time of superfast communication, inescapable energy waves and a bigger, better, faster, more national credo, American art is beginning to exhibit the first signs of significant mass media and pop cultural influence. Millions of images, both media induced and sociological, have been flashed in a fast-edit format into the brains of an entire generation of children in the ‘70s and ‘80s who have been forced to ingest it without question or choice.

Now, as the first children of the cable TV and VCR era of American life are starting to process the immense amount of data their once-fresh and permeable brains have been inundated with over the last three decades, a style of art has emerged that waves the banner of an entire generation of American youngsters. These are artists who have filtered the input of a media-fat culture and splattered it onto a canvas with riveting results.

And for a short time only, the local representatives of this unnamed movement have converged on a small gallery in downtown San Diego and dubbed it, "The Truth Show."

"The Truth Show" is not "art for arts sake." There are no watercolor nature scenes or wildlife stills in this gallery. Rather, the show is an exhibit that has its finger firmly on the pulse of something between animation, design and fine art.

While all pieces in the show are individual in stature, they also function as representatives of the entire show. And the show, in turn, seems to behave like one solitary collective consciousness.

And the consciousness is one of an unsure past behind an even more uncertain future. Artists like Bill Pierce, Douglas Thompson and Tim McCormick have pieces that exhibit a chaos of perverse nestled amongst common images. Pierce's sculptures of demonic machines of weaponry constructed with hardware store items or McCormick and Thompson's juxtaposed images of yins and yangs. Women have their say with artists like Lisa Petrucci, Megan Besmirched and Seonna Hong, who take femininity and show a coy deviousness under the guise of innocence. The images of girlishness in their works have a Venus flytrap quality to them.

Also featured in the show are the paintings of comic-artist Mary Fleener, the playfully unsettling paint of Bosko and the pseudo-Buddha sculptures and drawings of Yoni Laos, and many others.

Understand that the work featured in "The Truth Show" is meant to be powerful as well as pleasing. There is a long standing argument among artists that has raged for centuries. It concerns art and its place in the world. Some believe that it is meant to be pleasing and nothing more. Others feel that it is to portray a certain philosophy and enlighten others. The art of "The Truth Show" would fall into the latter classification. It is not "art for arts sake." It is a snapshot of a American youth all grown up and coping.

"The Truth Show" is currently on display at 343 4th Ave. in downtown San Diego (between J & K). It will run until Aug. 15. Call 619-417-8737 for more information. The show features the work of over 40 different artists.