Eye-popping art freezes time

Thursday, May 18, 2006 | 7:32 a.m.

Meet Mr. and Mrs. Middle America. Don't be alarmed by their eyeballs crawling from their sockets. Time has stopped momentarily. Blathering and chaos are unleashed.

"Crazy stuff happens," surmises Las Vegas artist Yo Fukui, in discussing his piece, "If Time Stopped .0003 Seconds," in which two glossy ceramic busts of a 1950s all-American couple have entered some insane, otherworldly dimension. Their ejecting eyeballs are represented by heads of tiny human bodies.

The man, in a green suit and black tie, holds a cigarette with a wilting, untapped ash and looks as if he has stopped mid-word. The woman, clad in a muted pink dress, is replete with a smoking volcano atop her tightly styled, yellow hair.

Fukui, who normally tells eight or nine stories within one schizophrenic sculpture, has gone from storytelling "like a movie director" to capturing one metaphysical moment.

The work is featured in the Contemporary Arts Collective's three-man exhibit, "Those Were the 2000's," which brings together old friends Fukui, Miguel Rodriguez and Tom Binger for a heavy dose of sociopolitical commentary through fun pop art.

The exhibit is the last show by the collective in the Arts Factory Space, and ends May 27. The collective then moves down the street to Holsum Lofts .

The artists, all of whom studied at the Kansas City Institute of Art, will attend tonight's opening reception.

Rodriguez coordinated the humorous and provocative exhibit, in which some of his work is relatively mild. Not so, however, is his very literal "It's a Skinny Bitch Buffet." The ceramic features the naked torso of a slender, slightly emaciated woman with large fake breasts, a collagen-injected upper lip and blond wig. Her body is orange and glistens in sparkles, and is mounted on a purple stand that features a dark-haired child crying over the impending loss of innocence.

The piece, Rodriguez says, is an archetypal image of today's woman - particularly in Las Vegas.

Society, he says, has "basically created a woman that looks like a comic book character" and young boys no longer distinguish between Lara Croft and a real woman.

"I learned what an attractive woman was growing up in a small town," he says, adding that Las Vegas nightclub advertisements have become "so grotesque, odd and sad."

Contrasting Rodriguez's self-described social mission is Fukui, who says he's merely creating dream-like sequences with no preaching.

"I don't want to talk about racism. I'm neutral," he says. Still, he has sculptures of Japanese characters topped with political themes - a Chinese man pops out of one woman's head, representing his military strength. He also uses white Americans and western iconography in "Let's Go to the Moon" - a cowgirl in a red, white and blue bikini atop a rocket.

Rodriguez says his ideas start out humorously, but become serious by the time the piece is complete. Binger's occasionally politically incorrect work has drawn laugh-out-loud responses.

Binger's "I've Got It," a ceramic and electric wall hanging of a 1950s everyman, has a clear light bulb clicking off and on above the man's head. His "Falling Off the Wagon" features two identical cartoon-like men lifting sudsy beers to their mouths while sharing a thought bubble of a covered wagon.

In another piece, two pistols wag under a sign that reads, "Your Gun Is for Fun."

The Contemporary Arts Collective is located in the Arts Factory at 101 E. Charleston Blvd. Hours are noon to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. For information, call 382-3886.