Theater of the eye - paintings, drawings and other works, Karen Carson, various galleries, Los Angeles and Santa Monica, California

Art in America, Nov, 1996 by Michael Duncan

The shifting, off-kilter planes of her 1980 painted tondo Double Swirl (seen at the Santa Monica Museum) reveal Carson's early debt to Richard Diebenkorn. The compressed targets and interior painted frames of California Roll (1981) reiterate her desire to penetrate the picture plane. Undauntedly punning on fears of seismic catastrophe, slapping vibrant, drippy planes against each other, Carson transforms the quintessentially flat shape of the target into that of an endlessly receding pit. Just as that work plays off its geographical setting, Repertoire (1984), a narrow, 10-foot-long horizontal work on paper, reflects the closed-in urban spaces of New York, where Carson lived for a short period. Evoking subway cars or apartment cubicles, a series of racked cubist boxes are juxtaposed to targets and ball-like masses. In her abstract paintings, Carson pushes illusionistic effects into psychological realms. Perspectival space envelops the viewer, evoking a feeling of enclosure that is both comforting and disturbingly controlling. Extending this idea in God's Eye (1988), Carson began to incorporate bits of mirror into opposing planes, reflecting images of the viewer at the borders of each deep, fragmented space.

The explosive feminist works discussed earlier turned Carson away from abstraction and toward a use of politically and psychologically charged symbols. The imagery of those pieces opened her work to a host of new visual sources: gang graffiti, rock music iconography, tattoo design, Mexican folk art. Incorporating the entire repertoire, Hearth, Heart, Earth, Art (1992)--arguably the most poignant and lasting art work to be generated out of the Los Angeles riots--perfectly evokes the specter of doom and oblivion which continues to lurk behind the city's ever-temperate facade.

Employing similar sources, the painted globes of the installation It's a Small World (1992) chart a cosmography of troubled planets, which are decorated with angels, clowns and targets. Hung from the gallery ceiling, one planet is peopled with creatures emulating Munch's The Scream; another doubles as a time bomb. At LACE, Carson surrounded the planets with large angels painted on the walls; frolicking sexually, they make hay while the sun still manages to shine.

Carson's 1994 guest-teaching stint at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas led to a series of vinyl banners inspired by the blunt graphic design of tourist and casino signage. Featuring her characteristic brand of comic, boldfaced sincerity, these banners utilize low-rent graphic design to convey elemental, spiritual truths and simple messages (Birth/Fashion/Death, You Are a Soul). New banners created for the retrospective have eliminated text and returned to more complex spatial compositions. The Cradle to the Grave (1995-96) presents the adage as an hourglass with a parachuting figure at its midpoint; the figure has leaped from the trapdoor of a floating cradle and is descending into an awaiting open casket. Bold graphic arrows indicate the directional flow, and loosely spray-painted lines overlay the design, giving it depth.