Hanging in the back corner of the gallery then, was a painting by Barrett entitled “Cat’s Eye”. It was blinking at me. As I moved closer I realized it was not just a painting but an assemblage of whirligigs, blinking lights, and mechanized parts repetitively performing mundane tasks but completely animating the surface of the painting. It was brilliant. I bought it. Thus began a relationship with and admiration of Bret Barrett’s paintings and kinetic sculptures, one that has lasted for several years now. Many of his works adorn the walls of my apartment and continue to enchant me.

Barrett is part of a loosely defined group of painters here in San Diego that have quietly and consistently produced bodies of work that are recognized for their technical prowess, as well as, their subject matter. Not quite Pop Surrealist and not quite the Juxtapoz School of Art — though many have been featured between the magazine’s cover — they often provide a wry, humorous and sometimes biting commentary on society poking fun at corporate industry, politics, and world events. Artists such as Dark Vomit aka Kelly Hutchison, Paul Brogden, and Brian Dombrowsky would make up the rest of this group. Former San Diego resident Dave Miles I would also happily include. What sets these artists apart from say a Matt Stallings is that they can paint — truly paint. No small feat in today’s image laden art world.



Reptilian Swashbuckler - Bret J. Barrett


Some of Barrett’s more memorable exhibits were with fellow colleague Kelly Hutchison at the Rubber Rose Gallery in North Park or at the Art of Framing Gallery in Normal Heights where Barrett is showing now. “Transports of Form” is Barrett’s second major solo show at Art of Framing and he has come prepared with a whole new body of work. It is a more focused and thematic exhibit than I am used to seeing by Barrett. I admire his tenacity and commitment to keeping the work “on track” so to speak, even when some of the smaller sculptural works feel forced and redundant.



Steam Punked: The Surrender of Horse Power - Bret Barrett


Transports of Form, its conception at least, came from a recurring dream Barrett said. I have just realized that Barrett has spoken of dream imagery before when referencing his work, but I never took too much stock of it and the impact it has on his work until now. I guess it is the aversion I have to the notion of using dreams as a source of imagery to make artwork. Naïve of me I know, but still, it seems so shamanistic — I’ll stop before I dig the hole deeper. But Transports of Form has a literal and quite physical importance to Barrett as well, since his sole means of transportation is by foot — this meant he told me, carrying all the work for this show from his home to the gallery. Beyond any political or environmental reasons for not wanting to own a car, Barrett understands that walking has its benefits of course — it’s healthy, but it also has its disadvantages, prolonging travel time considerably and increasing the dependence on others who do own cars. What walking does do effectively though, is change the appreciation and understanding of the landscape around us; it heightens that appreciation allowing the person walking to see things normally passed by in an instant in a car. It brings the human experience down to a humanistic and primitive level — to a level just before the invention of the wheel.



Chicken Sub (Toasted) top - Chicken Sub (Emerging) bottom - Bret Barrett


There is a sort of primitiveness that reigns throughout the work of Barrett, it comes through in the very rudimentary but very delicate kinetic sculptures he makes that vacillate between part-time garage mechanics slash inventors club slash low-brow low-tech tinkering that has no real purpose beyond the enjoyment of making something spin, gyrate, blink, rattle, and clang along. A fine example of this and by far the most poetic work in the show is the sculpture sitting in the front window of the gallery. The video featured above gives you an idea of its supreme wackiness, humor, on the brink of self-destruction and twirling, spinning, dildo-like proboscises surrounded by wire forms that encase brightly colored balls that rock back and forth in rhythm to some unheard orgasmic orchestra on the verge of climaxing or dying. A certain sort of primitiveness also appears in the paintings he makes and the forms he uses to convey an imaginary world filled with archaic symbols and floating UFO like shapes. One form you’ll find throughout Barrett’s work is a sort of hybridized seed pod inspired from a milk thistle plant, seeds of which, herbalists have used for over 2000 years to treat chronic liver disease.

Transports of Forms blends this primitiveness and mankind’s experiences, knowledge and ability to stand and walk on his own two feet into prehistoric, hybridized reptilian combines of animals and various transportation vehicles — if only the technology existed god willing, it would culminate a long evolutionary chain of Man, Beast, and Machine working together as one ever since horses were tamed, James Watts overhauled the steam engine and Jack Kilby invented the computer chip — but it would not be in the hopes of creating these Frankenstein-ish monstrosities of pachyderm heavy metal, but as a “thought experiment” (to quote a colleague) and imagine a world perhaps one day, where an alternative means of transportation adapted to the lifestyle and speed of its human counterparts could exist. It could also be seen as a broad commentary on an impending if not long overdue extinction of the human race and the second coming of the dinosaur age. Or to push the metaphor even further, a fragile eco-system dependant on the industrial and mechanical leftovers of mankind for survival and protection. And this is where the work in Transports of Form starts to become a bit problematic. Is anything of this possible or believable?



Pink Vanelephant (model) - Bret Barrett



Pink Vanelephant - Bret Barrett


Not all of the works in this exhibit do enough to capture my imagination. They are under no obligation to do so. But at times, it feels like I have caught the tail end of a story or I find myself watching some Planet of the Apes mini-series out of sequence or B-movie horror picture show. The camera cuts away from the set and we see that Godzilla is nothing more than a man in costume. There is plenty of humor in this exhibit and superb painting but is it enough to carry an idea that feels novelistic at times and divulges almost nothing as to its intent beyond the hybridization of two very different sources? Even Sid Phillips from Toy Story had a reason for dismembering his toys, but beyond the titles of some of the works on view – “Chicken Sub (toasted)”, “Tank Chick”, “Bottle-Nose Jet” or “Steam Punked: The Surrender of Horse Power” (both a painting and an actual model train that has a plastic horse’s head mounted on the front of the locomotive like some figurehead on a ship) is there ample enough content and interest to keep ours up and motivated? I don’t wish to be harsh because I can appreciate the concept, take pleasure in seeing what a VW bus crossed with a pink elephant would look like, and chuckle at some inside jokes and visual puns. I can marvel at the boyhood wonderment of discovering solutions to oblique problems or finding the exact component to make something run. I can also sympathize with the process and creative drive that inspired these creations and the need to bring a form that exists two-dimensionally into three dimensions as Barrett has done in several instances where a painting has inspired its 3-D brethren — as in the toy cars and planes — or vice versa when a found object or thrift-store find is fitted together both sculpturally and on canvas.



Steam Punked: The Surrender of Horse Power (model) - Bret Barrett


Curiosity is good. They say necessity is the mother of invention. Do Barrett’s works predict a future that may be or are they to be solely appreciated for their incredible and richly painted surfaces of bizarre animals and aging modes of transportation? My only regret, and it is a small one, is I had hoped Barrett’s maiden voyage would carry me a bit further and closer to my destination than what his gas-guzzling predecessors have done thus far, if not at least, in my mind.

The Art of Framing Gallery
3333 Adams Avenue
San Diego, CA 92116
619.563.9770
http://theartofframing.net
IMPORTANT!! exhibit on view through September 17 only

Bret J. Barrett

Bottle-Nose Jet - Bret Barrett



Tall Sail Lizard - Bret Barrett



Reptilian Swashbuckler - Tall Sail Lizard (models) - Bret Barrett