Ferns are among the first plants to take root in Hawaii’s barren volcanic landscapes, a critical component of the watershed, and are used in numerous styles of lei. Their unique development from fuzzy spiral to bright green lattice is inspirational, and their fronds illustrate a powerful mathematical concept: the fractal, or complex shape that is made up of smaller copies of itself. Drew Broderick’s "Paradise What" is a remarkably fernlike solo show that demonstrates many of the plant’s characteristics through multimedia approaches to life, identity and commerce in modern Hawaii.

Born on Oahu into a family involved in the tourism industry (his grandfather owned a Waikiki hotel) and indigenous cultural arts and practices (his mother owns Native Books in Ward Center), Broderick left Hawaii six years ago to study biology and sculpture at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He recently returned to live here full time, after completing an East-to-West voyage across the U.S. that followed the currents of hitchhiking and freight-train hopping. As the latest addition to Hawaii’s population of 20-something artists with bachelor degrees, Broderick finds himself reconnecting to different parts of his local root complex through art-making and critical thinking.

Traveling by improv and working with whatever was at hand appear to have informed this work; in "Paradise What," Broderick operates largely as a remix artist. The viewer encounters a ceiling-high column of paper cups decorated with palm tree silhouettes, a deflated kiddie pool with parrot and collapsed palm tree, an image of an idealized fruit-adorned tropical drink skewered by a grid of 425 plastic cocktail swords. There is nothing here that viewers won’t recognize as bits of commercial stereotypes and cliché, but as with all assemblage, the way the items are put together and the strength of their conceptual bonds make the meaning.

In a wall-mounted untitled piece, a "classic" Kim Taylor Reece reproduction conducts a dialogue with a Polaroid-size amateur photograph of a shirtless white male in a fake grass skirt and coconut bra. Casually tucking the junk photo behind the "serious" one seems lazy at first, but it invites the viewer to unwind the tight conceptual spiral created by Reece’s model, and the anonymous schmo. Reece’s image, descended from a long and controversial history of art idealizing hula, is one of the amateur photograph’s ancestors. Broderick punctuates this nexus of artifice with a trick of scale and self-similarity: The junk lei hanging on one corner of the frame is identical to the one worn by the man in the photograph.

"Untitled (Death of Cook)" is another take on the structure of nested histories. This large digital print of George Carter’s 1783 painting fictionalizes Cook’s last encounter with Hawaiians: out of ammo and calmly meeting the "savage" gaze of a blade-wielding warrior. Broderick’s broad calligraphic stroke of white paint partially obscures the action. With the painting’s narrative objective obscured, the viewer is encouraged to study the representations of Hawaiians and Europeans and the pair of somewhat incongruous palm trees in the background. From Cook’s last stand to the side of a paper cup or a Chinese-made beach blanket from ABC stores to Hilo Hattie, these palms are a permanent part of a Hawaii’s visual lineage of fuzzy historicism and commercial exploitation.

Broderick takes a step toward "rescuing" the palm by photocopying the leaves of the gallery’s own areca palm. The resulting diamond pattern contributes texture of one stormy black abstract and serves as energetic wallpaper behind "Untitled (Coconut Bra Rainbow Frown Face)." Here a blank canvas adorned with a simple rainbow hangs in front of the palms. The cups of the coconut bra become brown eyes, and its long straps hung over the corners evoke drooping lids. This piece is probably Broderick’s most successful, as it perfectly balances his capacity for clever arrangement of objects with a clear, original and nondogmatic representation of Hawaii as it is.

"Coconut Bra" puts Broderick on the path of further developing the "critical kitsch" explored by artists like Lawrence Seward (snarky coconuts), Trisha Lagaso Goldberg (alternative Hawaiian bracelet phrases), Gaye Chan (chunks of Waikiki itself) and Keith Tallet (tattooed bananas), who have all remixed Hawaii’s local consumer culture to address local life. Together they drip-feed an aquifer of art-driven critical thinking.

Using superficial network and consumer culture to explore one’s identity and derive one’s artistic practice can be a risky strategy, especially for those of Native Hawaiian ancestry like Broderick. But it is a legitimate and increasingly productive alternative to pursuing more traditional approaches such as studying at the Bishop Museum or under a cultural practitioner.

Broderick mitigates the danger with wit and observational skill, and is driven by an imperative to break preconceptions and recombine the ideas and perceptions that are freed in the process.