SANTA MONICA

It’s difficult to argue with Tom Jenkins’ politics. His paintings and performances have always been concerned with social justice, attacking corporate greed, the destruction of the environment through toxic pollution, as well as public apathy fueled by the yuppie mentality of upward mobility and conspicuous consumption. The obvious problem is: How do you present such issues to a broad enough audience without seeming preachy or bombastic, and how do you continue to paint good paintings that succeed aesthetically and formally as much as ideologically?

The answer is that you don’t. In many respects, Jenkins takes the easy way out by resorting to the facile satire of the cartoon and comic book. Working in bright, gaudy enamels on aluminum, Jenkins paints nightmarish landscapes depicting the worst excesses of deforestation, pollution, nuclear radioactivity and suburban sprawl. By using a flat, frontal style and stripped-down color values, Jenkins presents a simplified message in a simplistic style that ultimately caricatures evil rather than analyzes its mechanisms or devices.

A more incisive tack might have been to explore the parallels between corporate power and the art world, to place the audience in a context where being a passive consumer of art becomes a metaphor for passivity (and by extension, complicity) in wider social spheres. Moreover, Jenkins’ exploitation of materials derived from the very sources he attacks--enamel paints, aluminum, wood--places him firmly in the very economic network of corruption that he purports to despise. This may of course be Jenkins’ whole point, but in the long run there is a lot more to the relationship between political expediency and the role of aesthetics than is presented here. (Karl Bornstein, 1662 12th St., to Oct. 18.)