THE 2008 California Biennial is all over the place, and that means aesthetically as well as geographically. It includes the work of some 50 artists at over a dozen venues, mostly congregated at the Orange County Museum of Art, but with pieces or displays in Los Angeles, Tijuana, Joshua Tree, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco. This of course makes the biennial most difficult to see, or even put into perspective. I hereby disclose that I have only seen what is at the museum proper, so apologies if I've missed some astonishing piece elsewhere.

What is CB08 about? It seems to be about everything — California and places other than California, emerging artists and established career artists (including Andrea Bowers, Sam Durant, Einar and Jamex de la Torre, Yvonne Rainier, Raymond Pettibon), and painting, assemblage, video, installation, etc., etc. As a result, it also seems to be about nothing in particular. There's good work and bad work — that's to be expected in a show of this scope — but there's something slipshod about too much of the art, as if we're being shown works in progress, the artist midway through his or her process. True, process is something we've become more and more interested in, but it doesn't make for interesting viewing on this scale. For example, it has become tiresome to see people's offices — or studios or living rooms etc. — presented as art installations. In recent Los Angeles shows, we've been intrigued by showcases of Allan Kaprow and Francis Alys memorabilia, but these were presentations of established artists whose notes and sketches have context and reference, and whose work is often about process, whereas "The Backroom" is an obscure organization for most of us — set up, apparently, as a "temporary archive that focuses on artists' interests and inspirations rather than the 'final product' of their practices." I'm not sure what the point of bringing their archive to us is, or exactly which artists are being referred to. Files, notebooks, books and magazines were scattered about this modular office set up in the entrance lobby. Visitors walked quickly in and out of the space while I was flipping through some notebooks trying to make some sense of them.

Further into the exhibition is, in fact, an artist's studio that has been moved here, which may be novel for those poor souls who have never had the good fortune to visit an artist's studio. For Frauds for an Inside Job, Amanda Ross-Ho has cut out wall sections from presumably her studio and arranged them around a long gallery. The sections variously sport posters and prints, tape and thumbtacks, graphite and paint, a Beijing opera mask, a double door. Another questionable choice was by Jedediah Caesar's Helium Brick, a gigantic brick of melted or melting polystyrene/polyester resin, which dominated another gallery and was mainly notable for its size (4-foot high and 8-foot long) and plastics stench.

Let's look at some of the more interesting pieces. In fact, Caesar's photocopied watercolors, hung on the wall in a series near the offending brick, reflected a sensitive use of the watercolor medium. There was something appropriate about Patrick "Pato" Hebert's lawn signs which dotted the front of the museum — this being an election year, after all. The aphorisms on them were vaguely amusing — "Simplicity is humility," "Humor is a form of treatment," "Letting go is difficult for me."

William Leavitt's Gothic Curtain presented a set of curtains in a corner — from which sounds are emanating. I think I heard the sound of pelting rain, and thought about B movies and tawdry mysteries set midst dark and stormy nights.

The most arresting work in this show was also where visitors were pausing the longest. Daniel Joseph Martinez's Call Me Ishmael; or The Fully Enlightened Earth Radiates Disaster. True, my own interests don't always coincide with the masses, but in this case they did.

This work delivers a payoff in both form and content — the presentation is thoughtful and well-crafted, the imagery is haunting. In a large white room, on an elevated white platform, lies the body of a lightly-bearded man with closely-cropped hair. He wears a white shirt and white jeans, rolled up at the ankles. He's life-sized, with extraordinarily human-like skin and hair, but is so completely still you know it's a model. Then he begins to move, and it's freaky. Martinez has harnessed the technology of animatronics for this sculpture.

The cycle begins with the figure banging his fist on the floor – startling enough – then becomes increasingly violent, until it looks as if he is trying to stand up. But failing, and flailing. Because the figure is so human-like, both in appearance and in action, we naturally project ourselves into his situation, we feel both fear and pity, emotions elicited by Greek tragedies. Fear that we may befall his fate, pity that another human being may suffer so.

The point is, we can emotionally connect with this work. We can also intellectually ponder why the artist chose the title, "Call Me Ishmael" — the first line from Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Ishmael is the protagonist of this classic novel, a sailor who sails from Nantucket on a whaler, under the crazy-for-revenge Captain Ahab. So the figure, dressed in white, is perhaps a sailor? Ishmael sees all manner of cruelty and craziness on this voyage, and becomes a survivor when the whaler is shipwrecked. The story seems to be referenced by the alternate title of the piece — the earth radiates disaster, nature can be a frightening force, and frightening also the heart of man.

Martinez teaches at the University of California, Irvine, and perhaps it's no accident that two of the more interesting works by younger artists are by his former students. Kara Tanaka's kinetic sculpture Crushed by the Hammer of the Sun is a mechanized skirt that flies up when the spinning begins. It's mesmerizing and even beautiful, apparently inspired by the spinning dance of Sufi dervishes. Marco Rio's installation Vanishing Intent is a room with a ceiling dropped to his height. Visitors had a funhouse experience stooping as they walked to the far wall and getting their friends to take photos of them from the doorway. Personally, I don't mind if art appeals to the pleasure principle, although when it can trigger our more mature and developed sensibilities, as in Martinez' sublime piece, even better. ■

Daniel Joseph Martinez; Call Me Ishmael; or, The Fully Enlightened Earth Radiates Disaster Triumphant, 2006/2008; Courtesy of the artist; and The Project, New York; Photograph courtesy of Colin Young-Wolff

Patrick "Pato" Hebert, Text Messaging: 1,000 Points of Might, 2008; Mixed-media installation; Dimensions variable; Photograph courtesy of Carla Rhea Photography
background: Felipe Dulzaides, Now Hope, 2008; Site-specific billboard; 96 x 144 in.; Photograph courtesy of Carla Rhea Photography

Jedediah Caesar, Helium Brick, 2008;Private collection; Photograph courtesy of Carla Rhea Photography
background: Jedediah Caesar, Untitled, 2008; Selection of watercolors on xerograph; Courtesy of the artist; Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; and DíAmelio Terras, New York; Photograph courtesy of Carla Rhea Photography