November 18-24, 1983
	Only a few years after abandoning the shaped and painted aluminum sculptures he had developed into such brilliant, telling forms, downtown artist James Croak presents large-scale assemblages made of mounted animals and cultural artifacts ranging from miniature model railroad trees to a full-size 1963 Chevy SuperSport – at 17 feet long, one of the largest production cars ever manufactured in the United States. The latter, painted electric blue and red, with a leopardskin dashboard and window decal that reads "Show Me Your Tits," is actually the less arresting half of the sculpture: out of the car’s exploded roof rises a modern Pegasus made of a full-size quarterhorse that died of a heart attack at Los Alamitos and was purchased on the spot for $75. In the five pieces comprising Croak’s show, the first organized by Al Nodal for the Otis art gallery, a mythologizing impulse meets a sharp-edged sense of humor to form works that push around the borders of what constitutes art. In the aforementioned Pegasus, the natural strength and vitality of the horse contrast sharply with the artificial adornments of the car, suffocating in its shiny sheath of Pep Boys overdress. Elsewhere, a savanna-colored lioness serves as landscape for the tiny trees that sprout from her back and the gaping tears in her side. Minute soccer players flee across her back from a stampeding plastic elephant toward a campsite where two more little folks cut wood near their parked RV. The hilarity created by this dizzying confusion of scale almost hides the poignancy of the animal’s stoic pose. Croak learned a great deal of taxidermy while working with professional Ernesto Urcid to create these objets, which make up in suggestiveness what they lack in resolution. It’s hard to guess the future direction of Croak’s work, but this environment of quirky hybrids – half inspiration, half dread – bears a good deal of open-minded looking. Also one or more figures moved during the exposure. The results are what the artist calls "short movies referring to a span of time all at one." Otis Art Institute of the Parsons School of Design, 2401 Wilshire Blvd.; through Dec. 3. – Leslie Wolf