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La Jolla The instructional drumbeat of this show’s title—“Split, Splice, Splay, Display”—characterizes well the transparency and humor of Roman de Salvo’s best work. It describes in the most abbreviated manner the steps he takes to transform raw material (in this case, wood) into finished sculpture, and delivers the alliterative terms with a showman’s wink. De Salvo has a bit of the carnival barker’s performative flair (“It slices, it dices . . . ”) in addition to the patience and diligence of a fine craftsman.

For each of the six new pieces in this show (all 2008 or ’09), he split and segmented tree branches, recombining them into wall-mounted sections of tracery. The cut sides of the wood face out, and have been sanded so they read as smooth, continuous planes. That continuity is a coy illusion, since the spline joints (slender strips of wood inserted and glued into grooves cut into the ends of both joined pieces) that connect the sections are fully visible, and neither the grain patterns nor the width of the segments matches up precisely. De Salvo flaunts the artifice of his constructions while teasing organic-looking patterns from them. In Filter, Chinese elm branches are made to look like the veins of a giant (36-by-86-inch) double-stemmed leaf. In Delta Tissue, the slim lines of wood define a cluster of irregular rounded shapes suggestive of a cellular network or the residue of an agglomeration of bubbles.

Labeling art is sometimes a useful shorthand form of thinking. But it can also be a sign of flabby thought.

Take that well-worn term “conceptual art.” It has been applied to lots of different kinds of work in recent years, so much so that it becomes of less and less use.

Roman de Salvo’s inventive work is rich with ideas and idiosyncratic media, so this description has been applied to his work often, going back to the early 1990s. And yet the label fits uneasily with his art.

Consider this typical definition of it from Webster’s Dictionary: “an art in which the ideas of the artist are more important than the means used to express them.” Applying it to de Salvo’s art doesn’t quite work.

There is a generally a controlling idea. But he’s also a superb maker of things, whether his material is electrical conduit or whether it’s wood, as in his current exhibition at Quint Contemporary Art.

The works in this show — with its alliterative title, “Split, Splice, Splay, Display” — pick up where he left off with his large-scale permanent public work of 2006, “Nexus Eucalyptus,” installed on the site of the CalTrans District 11 headquarters in Old Town. The construction of the piece was a feat of engineering, in which he turned massive branches into a kind of seamless network resembling a roadway system.

Quint Contemporary Art is pleased to exhibit new works by artist Roman de Salvo. This will be the artists fifth solo exhibition at Quint. The exhibition opens on September 17th and will continue through October 17th, 2009. There will be a public reception on Thursday, September 17th from 6-8PM.

Roman de Salvo’s art has been described as both conceptual and humorous. The sculpture and installations he creates are witty, deadpan observations of culture and aesthetics. Employing materials normally associated with construction and decoration, de Salvo fashions art and anti-art objects that continually question the meaning of things. Fireplaces made of combustible wood, electrified conduit mazes, and home furnishings altered slightly and hilariously; all these describe a restless, curious intellect, fused with impeccable craft and technical skill.

Quint Contemporary Art has had several addresses in the past 30 years, but wherever it has been — downtown, Mission Hills, the Miramar area or La Jolla — the gallery has been a space you just had to visit. My history of seeing shows there spans 24 years; and from the first, I sensed that Mark Quint was the real thing, with his enormous passion for art and artists.

Happily, that intuition proved correct. But who knew that he was going to be able to sustain his space(s) for so long, in a town where collectors of serious contemporary art aren’t exactly plentiful?

It isn’t easy to pinpoint how he has accomplished this. But there are certain qualities that have worked in his favor: a keen eye for artists of vision and substance; the desire to stick with them; a curiosity about new artists; and a personality that appeals to museum professionals, collectors and, yes, critics, too. He was also willing to bring artists from afar for residencies (in partnership with Michael Krichman), which yielded a string of memorable shows.

QUINT: Three Decades of Contemporary Art

at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido Museum

August 15 – December 31, 2009

Special preview Saturday, August 15th from 6 – 9PM

340 N. Escondido Blvd.
Escondido, CA 92025
www.artcenter.org

Cocktails, hors d’ oeuvres, entertainment & live music.
$10 per person for non-members, free to Center Members.

RSVP to (760) 839-4120

The California Center for the Arts, Escondido Museum is pleased to present Quint: Three Decades of Contemporary Art. The exhibition, based on the program of one of San Diego County’s most influential galleries, will open on August 15th and continue through December 31st, 2009. Works in the exhibition, the majority of which have been borrowed from Southern California museums and private collections, present an extraordinary survey of the range of regional, national, and international artists supported and promoted by Quint Gallery over nearly thirty years.

Since opening his first gallery in La Jolla in 1981, Mark Quint adopted a unique, almost nomadic approach to the business of contemporary art. Rather than establishing itself in a permanent location and then expanding over time, Quint Gallery would more often adapt its spaces and program according to the needs of the artists it was interested in presenting. From formal gallery and raw open spaces in downtown San Diego, to large industrial workspaces for artists near Miramar Naval Air Base, to unexpected (and often elegant) spaces secluded in back alleys in Hillcrest or La Jolla, Quint Gallery has maintained the flexibility to represent artists employing a wide variety of practices, mediums, and formats.

Mark Quint, owner of La Jolla’s eponymous gallery, has showcased the work of contemporary artists for nearly three decades. On Aug. 15, Quint will present 75 pieces of that work by regional, national and international artists in “Three Decades of Contemporary Art” at The California Center for the Arts, Escondido Museum. The show will run through Dec. 31.

When the museum asked Quint to mount an exhibition featuring a selection of artists’ work that he has shown over the past 28 years, he had an ample list to choose from. But to build the exhibition, Quint had to borrow many pieces from Southern California museums and private collections. (At least half of the works belong to La Jolla collectors.)
“It is special for me to present the work of many of the artists that I’ve shown in one large space,” Quint said. “I haven’t seen a lot of this work in over 15 years.”

Many of the artists are from the San Diego region, and numerous pieces are large enough to require the spacious venue that the museum provides.