CCA Strikes Again

As a group art exhibit, "Inchoate" has no duds. From the target-practice photos of Bayéte Ross-Smith to the world-askew video panels of Reggie Stump, the new gallery with its giant windows overlooking Grant Street hosts an awful lot of talent; hats off to guest curator Jeanne C. Finley. One installation especially stood out at the opening reception, though: David Gurman's Reflector: 33.20N, 43.55E. It looks simple, even simplistic, at first, but it gets complicated fast. Consisting mainly of a souped-up overhead projector, the piece looks like a wobbling ball of light on the wall. It is a wobbling ball of light on the wall, but the nearby headphones inform you of the cause of the wobbling: explosions. A large subwoofer speaker is pointed at a bowl of water, playing the sounds of — What? Fireworks? The sounds are very large and sometimes very far away, and it turns out the recording was made by the "Thundering Third" Battalion, First Marines, in Al Fallujah, Iraq in 2004. The noises shake the water, and varying degrees of vibration float across its surface, and are projected on the wall. You're watching an abstraction of our war, and all of a sudden the glowing orb has a narrative. You can't stop watching — or wanting to duck. The show features California College of the Arts alumni.