Art: The king of California

Doug Padilla has spent his whole life cultivating a vast, soothing space in his mind. So why can't he squeeze an inch of it into his art?

This is the nagging subplot to Padilla's upcoming solo exhibition at the California Gallery, a rollicking, monthlong celebration that is equal parts career retrospective, belated 60th birthday party and bittersweet curtain call for the veteran art-scene gadabout. It will be his first major gallery exposure in more than five years -- and a reluctant one, breaking a self-imposed abstention from the art world that dates back to 2004. It may also be his last show, the goateed hepcat has implied, citing a wave of esoteric concerns pulling him away from art-making.

Padilla's paintings have always been, like his proposed party, oversized and raucous. Often as large as 8-feet-square, they seethe with a carnival freneticism. Each is an exploded piñata, with scavenged materials (Mardi Gras beads, amputated doll legs, watermelon seeds, field day ribbons) affixed liberally over kaleidoscopic walls of color. Even when Padilla switches to prints, ink drawings and "fashion deconstruction" collages, it's all heat and agitation -- a compulsive horror vacui that compels him to cram compositions corner to corner with claustrophobic doodles and scribbled meditation mantras.

And while the teeming visuals are usually a strength, imbuing Padilla's work with that quintessential "outsider art" feel -- the one that has consistently charmed admirers over the years -- they've always seemed strangely at odds with the guy's cosmic disposition.

I mean, this is Doug Padilla we're talking about. The great Minnesota dharma bum. The zenned-out Beat poet. A Lutheran Japhy Ryder, vagabonding through yoga ashrams and meditation retreats the world over. Anyone who's spent five minutes with the soul-patched, earringed bohemian has sensed a capacity for calm belying the guy's appetite for stimulation.

So why does such a cool cucumber always insist on producing such feverish art? And why let a screen of noise drown out the powerful spiritual narratives that Padilla pours into his pieces?

"Well, I never said I didn't have any demons," says Padilla. "But I'm working hard now to overtly combine my spiritual practices with my art."

Padilla's "Prayer Trees" consist of thousands of nails hammered at different lengths and intervals into blocks of wood. The metallic pins mushroom over the wood stumps like an industrial fungus, a brutalist Chia Pet born of sore muscles and sweat. Inspired by African fetish art, Padilla murmurs a prayer after driving each nail, and the result is a spiritual totem, freighted with the gravity of a thousand tiny sacraments. To look at each sculpture is to let the eye rest for a moment -- an imperative in this show -- to be still and feel the achy shoulder of pounding all those nails. It's an aesthetic of austerity and physical discomfort, the discipline of waking daily at 6 a.m. to meditate by the river, which has been Padilla's routine for some time now.

An entire exhibition of these would be depressing. But surrounded by Padilla's exuberance, the Prayer Trees make for a nice breather -- a lovely success for an artist who always made mindfulness part of the party.