Sex, death and cars

Michael H. Hodges / The Detroit News

Sex, death and — amusingly — UFOs predominate in the current show at Detroit’s C-Pop Gallery, “Carnivora: The Dark Art of the Automobile,” timed to overlap with the big North American International Auto Show at Cobo downtown.

It would be easy, perhaps, to see in “Carnivora” an implicit critique of Detroit, the current state of the Big Three, and their impact on the world. But that would be too simple — and a little narcissistic, to boot.

Rather, “Carnivora,” which runs through Feb. 22, looks far beyond the domestic auto industry, embracing the entire world’s dark romance with the automobile, and the central role the car occupies in mankind’s dreams.

It just so happens that most of the dreams presented here lean toward the nightmarish.

Some 65 artists worldwide are represented, with works that range from sculpture to painting to digital art. There are huge names — underground cartoonist R. Crumb and Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger, who designed the alien in the “Alien” films, to name but two artists.

Detroiters are well represented with works by, among others, Niagara, Topher Crowder and Ford GT40 designer Camilo Pardo.

If there’s one constant throughout this entertaining exhibition, it’s that most of these artists, whether European, Asian or North American, are positively enraptured with the classic age of 1950s American car design.

No matter what mayhem occupies the rest of the canvas — from car bombs to the apocalypse — those behemoths-with-fins are rendered with palpable affection.

But then, given the choice, which would you paint? A 1959 Chevy Bel Air or a 2005 Nissan Sentra?

Case closed.

“It’s not the car that’s dark,” says Rick Manore, C-Pop director, and the author of an essay in the show’s book. “The auto is neutral until a human being gets behind the wheel. Then it becomes our automotive doppelganger, a metallic extension of ourselves.”

As such, it’s no surprise that sex and death — those twin obsessions lodged somewhere behind the shiny chrome grill — figure highly. (Climate change, by the way, makes virtually no appearance.)

Take Niagara’s punchy, cartoonish “Light My Fire,” in which a stiletto-heeled dominatrix stands with gasoline can behind her 1950s classic, whose license plate reads “Detroit.” Behind her, a skyline erupts in flames.

The show’s organizer, New York artists’ rep and curator Les Barany, shrugs. “Well,” he says, “bad things can happen in cars, huh?”

Happily, there’s humor in the midst of the darkness.

If some of these works disturb — like Paul Rumsey’s mesmerizingly creepy “Cars,” in which gas-masked people morph into automobiles, or vice-versa — many others are a positive scream.

Eric Joyner’s luminous oil-on-wood “Close Call,” for example, catches a relieved alien-robot just as he bails out of a late-’40s Packard careening off a cliff.

Or consider self-described “auto artist” Bernardo Corman’s “Carp!” series. This features a group of small, colorful “fish” whose heads are the fronts of 1950s cars, which morph seamlessly into an elegant tropical fish before you hit the windshield.

“It just popped to mind,” Corman says with a grin Monday at C-Pop. “Fish with car heads.”

Curator Barany says he decided against putting out a general call when he began pulling the show together in August.

“I knew I’d be inundated with a lot of work I wasn’t crazy about,” he says. “Instead, I used the opportunity to go after people I’ve been a fan of since I was in art school.”

About a third of the works, Barany adds, were created specifically for “Carnivora.”

From Detroit, the exhibition will travel to that other car-crazy town, Los Angeles, for a show at the L’Imagerie Gallery.

As for fears that some patrons will take the show as an attack on the local industry, Pardo says that never occurred to him.

“Especially for people in my field,” says the Ford designer, “it’s very cool to see something a little more colorful. Because generally all we see are the happy, shiny illustrations. It gets a little redundant.”

Whenever he hosts a designers’ party, Pardo says, “I always try to bring in some weird, Salvador Dali-like art. For us in the creative end, it’s refreshing.”

Indeed, the enthusiasm for man’s favorite vehicle — despite the show’s premise — is confirmed in the exhibition catalog, now available on amazon.com. The short bio on each artist notes what kind of car she or he drives.

Niagara motors around Motown in a metallic-silver, 1966 Cadillac Coupe DeVille.

Pardo owns a 2005 Ford GT, a 1967 Mustang fastback, a 1982 Ferrari BBi, and a dinky 1972 Fiat 500 — which he says he parks in his living room/studio.

And Barany, the evil genius behind the whole show?

A typical New Yorker, he’s never learned to drive.

You can reach Michael H. Hodges at (313) 222-6021 or mhodges@ detnews.com.