ART REVIEW : DISTINCTIVE ARTISTIC VISIONS AT PLAY

SAN DIEGO — Two exhibitions downtown, despite many ostensible similarities in their origins, represent two very different approaches to art--one seductive, the other confrontational.

Both the artists are women and both are graduate art students on the San Diego campus of the University of California. Both use untraditional materials and formats. Most importantly, however, both artists, despite their relative youth, have initiated distinctive artistic visions.

Minori Yata at the Anuska Galerie (2400 Kettner Blvd.), which is quickly becoming a major space in town, shows “three-dimensional collages” made of stripped tree branches; small, irregularly shaped pieces of plywood, and paper, including exotic, brightly colored papers made in Japan (the artist’s birthplace) and fragments of personal correspondence. It is a beautiful and moving group of works.

In place of pigment for color Yata typically wraps tree branches with bits of colored and patterned papers creating brilliant and complex but non-painterly color experiences. Whether wall-oriented, as most of them are, or floor-oriented, Yata’s works challenge the traditional definitions of painting and sculpture.

The most dramatic and largest work (8 by 12 feet), the centerpiece of attention in the gallery, is “Stream, My Letters” (1985). The image itself, turbulently swirling around mountain boulders, effectively conveys the strong, personal emotions of the artist. Tree branches extending into the room do not violate your space but open the illusory surface, inviting you to enter it.

Yata deals with similar complexities in “Waterfall,” with vertical branches centered on a green and blue field, and in “Forest of Memories,” with faces and figures buried in a modulated green field and a surface of broken twigs.

She also deals with simplicity in a piece like “Distant Mountains,” which is nothing more than a curving, paper-wrapped branch horizontally installed on a wall. It is minimal yet evocative, like a musical theme that is complete in itself yet infinitely open.

Amanda Farber at the Patty Aande Gallery (660 9th Ave.) shows painted mixed-media constructions that violate our traditional sense of high art through the use of humor and exaggeration.

Farber’s titles (as do Yata’s) straightforwardly tell you what the works represent. “Refrigerator Door Handle” (much enlarged), “Car Door” (true scale but very painterly), “Boat” (only its prow), “Giraffe” (only its neck) and “Dinosaurs Ate Them” (huge fiddlerferns) either aggressively invade our space or bewilder us through their incompleteness and changes in scale. “Kitty,” sitting on the floor against a wall, is a puzzle (it looks like a lemon wedge) until you realize that it represents a cat’s yellow eye, nearly two feet tall. Then you feel that you’re being stared at.

Farber also exhibits a selection of very strong, minimal drawings in graphite on red paper, most of which are related to her painted constructions.

Through confrontation, Farber seduces us into entering her world of whimsicality. Through seduction, Yata confronts us with her memories and emotions.

Also at the Patty Aande Gallery is a selection of paintings by San Francisco-based artist Rebecca Zagorski. They are very accomplished works of art with the delicate look of pastels rather than oil pigments. “Joan, No. Two” is a knockout portrait that conveys the sense of a real person. “4 O’Clock San Francisco” captures the magical light of that hour when “The City” looks like a stage set.

Yata’s show continues through Friday; Farber’s and Zagorski’s through May 31.