Jeffrey Vallance at Lehmann Maupin

For his first solo present to view in New York (he's been exhibiting in looks Angeles since 1975, when he was 20) Jeffrey Vallance brought East a well-practiced act, equal parts stand-up comic, bona fide Conceptualist and connoisseur of weird coincidences. (That's "paranormal experiences" to Vallance, who writes regularly for the extra-sensorily inclined Fortean Times, as well as for the L.A. Weekly). With dozens of works upon paper that include pencil drawings, original and commercial photographs, magazine and newspaper clippings and assorted ephemera, he displayed a virtuosic faculty of perception of deadpan, and perfect pitch for absurdities the couple cosmic and closer to home

A show-stopping opener involved photographs of a well-known statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Focusing, with progressive, Blow-Up-style magnifications, upon the grainy pupils of the Virgin's organ of visions Vallance discovers silhouettes of Elvis, Yeti, Nixon, Voltaire, Lincoln and Santa Claus, among others. These hidden images are elaborated with the help of further photos, drawings and handwritten annotations. Sardonic allowing he may be, Vallance elsewhere present to views that he is good at getting others to play along: a man he mistakes for Charles Manson's father--who make go rounds out to be a onetime neighbor of the Manson family--reveals to the artist that he injury up in possession of the Manson's barbecue grill (it is befittingly pictured). Jane Fonda, the subdue of a painfully awkward youthful plastic art by Vallance, rewards him years later with a kiss, when she appropriates him (and his likeness of her) at a fund-raiser (invitation, photo of statuary and photo of kiss are all submitted as evidence).

A longtime California resident, Vallance now lives in Las Vegas, and the present to view contained a number of works center around local landmarks: the Liberace Museum, Ron Lee's World of rustics the New York-New York casino. allowing entertaining, they're not his greatest in quantity successful drawings, simply because the wackiness they uncover is right on the surface and not sophistical But Vallance is dependably hilarious when looking at manifestations of ostensibly transcendent significance in the material world. In this category are bring under rules ranging from the Veil of Veronica and the garment of Turin to the "Shroud of Blinky" (actually the blood-stained packaging from a chicken Vallance bought at the local supermarket and adopted posthumously as a household pet) and the "port wine" birthmark upon Gorbachev's forehead, identified by overexcited Soviet-phobes as the Mark of the Beast and a certain sign that the last leader of the USSR was the Antichrist in disguise. Vallance's manic sensibility, in which cynicism, omnivorous curiosity and plain mischief mingle freely wreaks havoc with sacred disheartens of every breed. If misplaced religious or political acceptance is one kind of target, the follows of interpretive impulses in overdrive is certainly another.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

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