Brent Riggs has a fondness for “gaud...

Brent Riggs has a fondness for “gaud and tawd” that he uses to good effect in a series of acrylic paintings now on view at Java Coffeehouse/Gallery (837 G St.). He uses elaborate old frames, frequently in multiples within one another, and glitzy mats as containers for inset, interrelated, representational images in acidic, high-key colors. The “trashiness” of the presentations complements the political and cultural content of the works, titled as a series “History Lessons, Chapter IV.”

An additional nose-thumbing convention is Briggs’ “salon” installation, with paintings stacked above one another behind stanchions and velvet ropes. There appears to be nothing sacred to this aggressive iconoclast.

A satirical work like “Fission or Fusion?” which the artist describes as “a visual pun based on the 1960s anti-war slogan ‘Make love, not war,’ ” features an intimately embracing man and woman paired with an atomic cloud. “Madonna and Child, Immaculate Deception” features an androgynous, armed Cossack holding a bomb as if it were an infant. “1984” is a devastating portrait of Ronald Reagan with military and cowboy insets. “Myth,” which is symbolically the most enigmatic, is also visually the most beautiful.

Briggs’ imagery is heavy-handed, but it drives home the points that he wants to make with humor and horror.

The exhibit continues through Dec. 27.

The paintings, drawings and collages of Ann Reilly Silber at the Jung Center (3525 Front St.) convey basic images, feelings and ideas that the great Swiss psychiatrist postulated are present as archetypes in everyone’s subconscious. Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky and Adolph Gottlieb were only a few of the great American artists influenced significantly by Carl Jung.

Silber has been influenced as well by the ancient Chinese oracle book, the “I Ching.”

Generally, she uses a horizontal format suggesting landscape with compositional bands that appear to represent primordial ooze, clear water, earth and air. Organic aquatic forms appear often, as does a “key” form. “Inner Journey,” with a row of chrysthanemumlike eyes at horizon level, is especially engaging, as is “Confrontation,” the most nearly purely abstract of the works exhibited, and the most darkly threatening but also seductive.

The exhibit continues through Dec. 15.

Roberto Salas has created a large, two-part mural on the art deco-style billboard at the Mobil station on F Street, between 9th and 10th avenues.

Entitled “San Diego Under Construction,” it is a semi-abstract and symbolic portrait of the city with recognizable features such as the Coronado Bridge, the skyline and traffic-jammed freeways. At the center are images of a large grader and an artist with a brush. An erupting volcano suggests, perhaps, the rebellion of the earth, and a comet, punishment from outer space. Elsewhere, a surfer stands near a pier extending far into the ocean.

Salas’ mural is an effective use of an otherwise barren space.

The work will remain on view through March 22.

Sushi (852 8th Ave.) is presenting “Artists by Themselves,” an exhibit of self-portraits. Of 450 artists throughout the nation invited to participate, about one-third responded with wildly varying results, ranging from straightforward drawings of faces to representations of other body parts to conceptual works.

Overall, the exhibit is a fair sampling of contemporary American artists’ styles and concerns. It is also, considering its eclectic nature, of surprisingly high quality.

A few of the outstanding works, all in an 8 1/2-by-11-inch format provided by Sushi, are a series of drawings on vellum by Gillian Theobald, a cartoonlike green image by Richard Allen Morris, a compulsively complex geometric abstraction by Channa Horwitz and a delicate drawing with overlaid narrative text by David Beck-Brown.

The works will be auctioned Dec. 20 to benefit Sushi’s visual arts program.