Mangled rubber and backwoods BMX in ‘Bike Curious?’

NATHAN SAWAYA’S ‘BRICKYCLE’

You need not know what a fixed-gear bicycle is to understand “Bike Curious?,” which is to say that whatever you ride (cruiser, mountain, nothing), so long as you can still remember what it felt like when the training wheels came off, you’ll probably love this show. You may even feel within you a distant longing for your old BMX—the one that got stolen, or ran over by a car, whatever your story—but hold that thought. We’ll come back to BMX bikes in a moment.

First, let’s visit with some whimsical and conceptual bicycle art, none of which is too highbrow and all of which—focused neatly on the second floor of Go,Rilla! Gallery in Santa Ana—is commendable.

There’s Chad Eaton, whom I love, with Collectors and Quickly, two of his bicycling Abe Lincoln pieces, first seen at the Broadlind Cafe (sob) but somehow now—perhaps because they’re eye-level, and you can see the motion lines in the tire spokes—more about the bikes and less about the flowing beard-scarves of the men riding them.

Across the room are Leslie Caldera’s mixed-media pieces, employing everything from crushed paint tins and old photographs to ceiling fan blades and a bike reflector. The most striking is Retired, a busted Coca-Cola bottle crate stuffed with shreds of tires and tubes like shoes in a rack. Never mind the cute play in the title; the piece works because it captures the essence of what it means to bike. Baseball players have the smell of leather and dusty clothes; the future owner of Caldera’s art will see this mangled rubber and not just know its smell but have the skinned knees to prove it.

There’s so much that I love about this show—like Paul Nagel’s Cruisin’, with his blonde Alfred E. Neuman pedaling happily through post-apocalyptic suburbia—but let’s jump to the third floor. This is the boy’s room, you realize instantly, surrounded by mainly black and white photographs and illustrations of BMX life. Bob Haro does for BMX with the toon what Rick Griffin’s Murphy character did for surfing; Go,Rilla!’s own Mikey turns in an adorable line drawing of King Kong and Godzilla cycling in tandem; and Jeff Zielinski steals the show not just with the simple gutter spray captured in Rollin Solo, but unquestionably with Blaze, snapping a backwoods biker mid-trick off a dirt ramp, his body parallel to the ground, with just Zielinski and a pet puppy to witness it. Standing there, I scratched on instinct at where a scab once lived on my left elbow, the byproduct of a bad fall off my old BMX. This isn’t art that’s supposed to make you feel cool. It just makes you feel.

BIKE CURIOUS? GO,RILLA! GALLERY | 3013 N MAIN ST | SANTA ANA 92705 | 714.547.5451 | GORILLAGOZILLA.COM | OPEN DAILY 11AM-7PM | THRU SEPT 12

Tags: art, bikes, gorilla gallery, Santa Ana