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鈥淟ucid Perturbations鈥� at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art is a focused survey exploring the last two decades or so of China Marks鈥� career, from the time she started working with sewn fabric until now. According to the press release, it is also the first time the gallery has ever devoted both floors of its 5,000-square-foot space to the work of a single artist. So, it鈥檚 a pretty big deal.

All the works in the show 鈥� over 200 wall pieces and books 鈥� are made from sewn fabric, along with other fun, mixed-media elements, such as googly eyes and sequins. Marks had worked for decades in other media before picking up a sewing machine in December of 2000 in her late 50s, diving headlong into a mode of art-making that鈥檚 proved exceptionally fertile and generative ever since. Marks calls this body of work 鈥渟ewn drawings,鈥� as opposed to 鈥渟ewn paintings鈥� or 鈥渜uilts,鈥� evidently to underscore her intuitive, unplanned approach, which she has described as a 鈥済reat, shaggy, seemingly interminable process.鈥�

These visually exuberant works are full of clashing patterns, snippets of wry text and culturally diverse art-historical references 鈥� all part and parcel of the turn-of-the-millennium art-world zeitgeist from whence it sprang. My memories of that era are vivid, because I was in art school then.

After decades of dry conceptualism dominating the art world, visual pleasure was all the rage. Maximalist artists such as Philip Taaffe and Fred Tomaselli were in high demand. The line between art and craft was starting to blur, with serious attention being paid to fiber arts and quilting. The artist Nancy Crow, who had been quilting since the 1970s, developed freeform cutting techniques in the 1990s that felt fresh and exciting. And in 2002, the first major survey of Gee鈥檚 Bend 鈥渃razy quilts鈥� traveled to 11 cities, including a stop at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, influencing untold artists.

What accounted for the ascendancy of craft, decoration and maximalist aesthetics in that millennial moment? Partly, it was a cultural shift. Many of my professors had rebelled against the stultifying language of formalism they鈥檇 been taught in favor of feminist, postmodern and multicultural perspectives. As teachers, they encouraged us to look beyond the Western canon and to approach art-making in a spirit of play.

I remember when I visited the Museum of Modern Art in 1999 with my fellow art students, we all hated the Jackson Pollock retrospective 鈥� boring, repetitive, excessively macho 鈥� but loved Sigmar P枚lke鈥檚 sarcastic, cartoony drawings and weird, psychedelic collages. Colorful patterns and subversive humor resonated with us, while the 鈥減urity鈥� of Pollock鈥檚 approach 鈥� no stories, no images, just paint as paint 鈥� felt practically fundamentalist.

Marks鈥� art abounds in subversive, postmodern humor. She appropriates from the entire history of human material culture 鈥� new and old, East and West, high and low. Chinese embroidery, Liz Claiborne scarf patterns, prehistoric cave art, crucifixion scenes, superhero comics, ukiyo-e woodblock geishas, Vincent van Gogh鈥檚 self-portraits, the 1980s cartoon character Strawberry Shortcake, tapestry copies of pre-Raphaelite paintings, op art-inspired fabrics, Victorian bric-a-brac 鈥� anything is fair game, it seems, for Marks to churn and repurpose. She stitches together faces and body parts from disparate stylistic and cultural contexts to create creepy-cute, neo-Dadaist monsters. She gives these characters speech bubbles and has them say things like, 鈥淵ou are not wanted here,鈥� 鈥淧lease don鈥檛 pity me! Really!鈥� or 鈥淲e have our own problems, an important dinner party tonight.鈥�

Don鈥檛 let the visual density and narrative complexity of the works overwhelm you. Remember that Marks鈥� process is playful and spontaneous. She rarely preplans. As viewers, of course, we have the option to try to decode all her art-historical references and figure out what they mean in combination. But it may be just as fruitful to imagine a child with a toy box full of antique figurines from around the world. Whatever meanings those figurines had within their respective cultural and historical contexts are obliterated by the child, who gives them new names and invites them to a tea party.

Such radical decontextualization would have felt progressive to me in the early 2000s. Many influential artists at that time, including Iona Rozeal Brown (now known as Rozeal), Kara Walker and Nikki S. Lee, were making art that playfully subverted racist stereotypes. Marks鈥� insertion of ukiyo-e geisha figures into culturally and historically ambiguous narratives is not dissimilar from Rozeal鈥檚 contemporaneous depictions of ukiyo-e geishas in blackface. It seems na茂ve in retrospect, but at the time, some of us really believed that racism could be defeated through humor.

A 2004 New York Times review by Grace Glueck praised Marks鈥� 鈥渂ravura,鈥� and Marks鈥� approach to history and culture is definitely daring. By taking absolutely everything out of context, Marks creates her own 鈥渇loating world鈥� (the literal meaning of 鈥渦kiyo鈥�), where characters from anywhere and everywhere embark on new adventures, unencumbered by their previous cultural identities. Together, perhaps, they can extricate themselves from what the postmodern theorist Jean-Fran莽ois Lyotard called 鈥渢he religion of history.鈥� Or maybe not. But they seem to be trying.

Marks, incidentally, is the artist鈥檚 actual surname, but she adopted the first name, 鈥淐hina,鈥� as a punning allusion to china marking pencils, also known as grease pencils, which are used for writing on porcelain. As a nom d鈥檃rtiste, 鈥淐hina鈥� recalls mark-making, but also Chinese civilization. The idea of a white artist calling herself 鈥淐hina鈥� while making art that incorporates Asian motifs may seem a bit cringe today, but a quarter century ago, when 鈥減ost-racial鈥� ideas were being batted around, it probably would have seemed self-depricating 鈥� a lighthearted way of poking fun at her own cultural porousness. Simpler times, I suppose.

There is much in 鈥淟ucid Perturbations鈥� for contemporary, culturally sensitive audiences to wrinkle their noses at, but there is also much to admire. We can argue endlessly about the ethics of cultural appropriation 鈥� particularly in Marks鈥� case, where decontextualization is her modus operandi. But the longer I spend with the work, the more enthralled I become. Her characters are so jumbled, in space and in time, that many don鈥檛 seem to know where they are 鈥� or who they are. They are lost. Their identities are fragmented. Sometimes they look like cultural stereotypes. Sometimes they look like Frankensteinian monsters, cobbled together from the detritus of empires. But do their appearances reflect how the artist herself sees them, how they see each other, or how they see themselves?

I think there are two main paths to becoming a great artist: reduction and expansion. In the reductive approach, you pare your art down until it鈥檚 almost nothing. In the expansionist approach, you keep throwing more and more stuff into the soup pot until it encompasses practically everything. The reductive approach is elegant but safe. The expansionist approach is messy, but it usually yields more interesting results.

I will always favor an ambitious artist who takes risks over one who鈥檚 cautious and reserved, and Marks is an inveterate risk-taker. She says she wants her art to reflect the world 鈥渋n all its glory, horror and absurdity.鈥� It might unsettle or perturb us. But in this crazy, mixed-up world, I think we need more crazy, mixed-up art, not less.

Logan Royce Beitmen is an arts writer for the sa国际传媒官网网页入口. He covers visual art, music, fashion, theater and more. Reach him at lbeitmen@abqjournal.com or on Instagram at .