Fast Cars, Abstract Lines
KENNETH BAKER, Chronicle Art Critic
Saturday, July 22, 2000

A memorable video piece with a heavy-metal soundtrack throbs in conceptual artist Guy Overfelt's show at Hanley. The camera sights through a steering wheel at a speedometer slowly climbing from 30 mph to almost 120.

We believe so willingly the dial's and the racing engine's report that we overlook at first the obvious, frightening implication that the driver too is looking through the camera, not at the road.

Thoughts of the young Chris Burden's hair-raising performances come to mind.

When Overfelt finally raises his lens slowly above the dashboard, we see that the car is doing about 35 on an empty desert highway.

The rest of the video is a hash of reckless driving, quick cutting and accelerated footage that mocks the fantasy appeal of TV car commercials.

Overfelt's stills of burnt-rubber ``parking lot drawings'' show that the spinouts and fast starts in the video are also something else: drawing practice for his own land art. Overfelt phrases art references in car-freak vocabulary, comically linking subcultures that take little notice of each other.

A modified neon beer sign gives a wink toward Bruce Nauman. The untitled ``Hoosier burnout drawing'' quotes directly Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage's classic ``Automobile Tire Print'' (1953). ``Untitled (Endless Bud),'' which obliges its owner to replenish its component supply of beer in perpetuity, ingeniously mingles references to Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Andy Warhol, Ashley Bickerton and maybe even Tom Marioni.