SANTA MONICA

Frank Romero’s art is founded upon equal parts passion, anger and playful humor, which helps to explain its contradictory combination of acute political awareness and often infuriating simplicity. Because Romero’s sensibility is essentially populist, his paintings and cut-out “sculptures” communicate in much the same way as his murals: as broad epic sweep writ small.

Romero came to the fore in 1974 as a member of the Chicano art collective, “Los Four,” which also included Carlos Almaraz. Working in a variety of media, he has since evolved a bravura style that draws, among others, upon Almaraz’s electric sense of color, the loose sinewy line of Rico Le Brun and the archetypal symbolism of Mexican folk traditions. Romero’s iconography is quintessentially Latino and urban, an eclectic melange of car culture, violence, the East Los Angeles landscape and the allure of lurid sex.

In his latest work, there are signs that Romero is beginning to explore more overtly narrative and formal concerns, tightening both his stroke and compositional sense to create more integrated, and perhaps more distanced paintings. “Still Life With Red Car,” for example, evokes the surrealism of De Chirico, “Maya Desnuda” suggests an expressionistic reworking of Goya, while “Red Woodie” is essentially Chicano Pop.

The highlight of the exhibit is clearly “The Death of Ruben Salazar,” an idealized mythologizing of the Latino journalist who was killed by police during the 1970 Whittier Boulevard anti-war demonstrations. Rendered in Romero’s customary cartoony style, the piece is as much about myth and the ethos of martyrdom as it is a paean to a political activist, suggesting that time and reflection have tempered Romero’s anger and switched his concerns to the import of history as social catalyst.

It is clear that the emotional impact of Romero’s oeuvre lies not in its accumulated details or subtlety of composition but rather in its sense of ethnic and geographical scope. It will never win over the conceptualist or advocate of “good” painting, but that is hardly Romero’s intent. He simply demands an honest response, forcing the audience to either accept the work on its own terms, or not at all. (Karl Bornstein, 1662 12th St., to July 30.)