ART REVIEW : EXHIBITION GETS EVEN WITH A CRITIC

In an art world susceptible to novelty, a critic has many encounters of the weird kind, but this week marked a first. A critic found an artwork that threw up on him.

It happened thus: Critic on routine patrol at the Otis/Parsons gallery, reviewing the exhibition “San Francisco Science Fiction,� approached artwork, note pad in hand. Having duly recorded that it is titled “Crawler,� made by Mark Pauline in heavy stylistic debt to Jean Tinguely’s kinetic sculpture and the scarier “Star Wars� robots, the critic observed an electric eye in front of the work and proceeded to break the beam manually.

After all, what could happen? Just moments earlier he’d reached into a box labeled “Reach� by David Owen and heard agreeably weird electronic sounds. Only minutes ago he’d pushed a slot-machine crank on a construction by Lee Roy Champagne and it lit up like a psychedelic light show in a gum-ball machine. Before that there were the antics of Bryan Rogers’ “Perfect Timing.� It consists of a metal bed frame bearing a large air compressor. Periodically, as if it has a mind of its own, the thing huffs and puffs. A concentric red-and-white target spins furiously while a plunger repeatedly penetrates its center. After noting some possible subtle sexual symbolism, the critic moved on to “Crawler� and broke the beam.

A rusty mechanical claw grasped at the air. A long, necklike pipe with teeth in the end swung around. A friendly punk girl shouted “Look out!� but it was too late. The critic was doused. He chuckled in his chagrin.

“Well, poetic justice. Ho-ho. No harm done. Just water, I think. Old clothes anyway. . . . “

He seemed to take it like a sport, but then proceeded to write a bad review of the exhibition. Said it was a silly pastiche of ‘60s head-shop art and ‘70s sci-fi that looked so callow and amateurish.

He managed a few kind words about the innocence of Clayton Bailey’s robot with the coffee urn head, but accused many of the 40 little-known Bay Area artists of secretly worshiping the technology they pretend to satirize. He hinted that some of the smaller works were co-opted by galactic-kitsch music and sloppy tableaux. In short, the critic trashed the show.

Anyhow, it is going to continue to April 30 because everybody knows he was just mad because the artwork threw up on him.