Lines, visions and ‘bears,’ oh my

Sam Morris

Paintings by James Gobel in the exhibit “Big Rock Candy Mountain” are made from inlaid hand-cut felt and yarn and depict burly gay men, sometimes called “bears.” Gobel, who studied at UNLV and has been portraying “bears” for years, harnesses the pop art imagery of the album covers of his youth. In another project, Gobel put on as much weight as he could and photographed himself daily for 35 days.

By Kristen Peterson (contact)

Friday, April 10, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Big Rock Candy Mountain

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Sam Morris

The other half of "Big Rock Candy Mountain," by D'Nell Larson of Los Angeles, includes an untitled installment of fishing line dyed ultramarine blue, as well as two-dimensional drawings on paper.

“Big Rock Candy Mountain” is the name of a dreamy folk tune, recorded by Burl Ives and countless others, that portrays a hobo’s vision of a plentiful utopia where “cigarette trees,” “lemonade springs” and soda water fountains fill the “land of milk and honey.”

It is also the name of a new exhibit on display at Naomi Arin Contemporary Art in SoHo Lofts.

Playing on the theme of a fantastical world, the exhibit features the work of San Francisco artist James Gobel and Los Angeles artist D’Nell Larson, who toy with the question: “If you were going to have a hypothetical perfect world, what would it include?”

Larson’s installation at one end of the gallery can best be described as ethereal and illusory.

Fishing line, covered in ultramarine blue pigment, runs taut from wall to wall, crisscrossing — think drawing in space in Yves Klein blue. The whisker-like lines become invisible just before piercing the wall, creating an illusory effect. It’s there, but is it?

The material is durable and strong, but barely perceptible.

The Los Angeles resident, with a master’s in fine arts from the University of Illinois and bachelor’s in fine arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, creates contemporary fine art from craft materials that deal with love and romance and intersections and destiny. She maps the connections in people’s lives and the missed opportunities, how they cross or don’t cross, how they come together.

The installation pulls you in, lets you walk up to it and under it and examine intersections or absorb the piece as a whole from afar.

Larson’s two-dimensional works in the exhibit are visual fragments of love songs (“Open Arms” by Journey and “The Killing Moon” by Depeche Mode) as they appear as audio waves on a computer. She then draws them in color pencil on watercolor paper. Those works, she says with a smile, might have something to do with to the fact that she is the daughter of wedding singers.

The rest of the space is dedicated to Gobel, whose paintings made from inlaid hand-cut felt and yarn result in bold and colorful depictions of “bears,” burly gay men.

His recent work, large-scale double portraits of princely and regal dandies on candy-colored, stylized backgrounds, reflects the pop art imagery emblematic of 1960s and ’70s album covers Gobel grew up with.

Pretty, flawless and exquisite, the portraits could give you starry-eyed bubble-gum dreams. Health and beauty are depicted through rosycheeks, thick eyelashes and rich curly locks of hair. Each head is looking at its own reflection.

Gobel, who studied art with Dave Hickey at UNLV, has been portraying burly gay men for years. Earlier works show them in a sort of urban lumberjack-style dress — flannel shirts, jeans, suspenders and concert T-shirts (Pixies, Morrisey and the like).

More recently, they’re dressed in period clothes that reflect an era in which large men were considered beautiful, fat meant wealth and heavy dandies were decked in tailored clothing. The pieces in “Big Rock Candy Mountain” were made from 2006 to 2008, and this is Gobel’s first suite of double portraits to be shown.

In 1995 Gobel gained as much weight as he could over 35 days and photographed himself each day, an effort opposite that of Eleanor Antin, a performance artist who photographed herself crash dieting in the 1970s. Gobel, who is 5 feet, 11 inches, weighs 260 pounds and lives among the bears he depicts.

He sees a parallel between the preening of the bears in flannel and concert jerseys and the dandies, and his medium portrays them in a very lovable light.

“I ended up making paintings that are warm, fuzzy and cuddly of people not thought to be,” he says.