LA CIENEGA AREA

Paul McCarthy made his reputation as a performance artist, a fact that might be deducted from his more conventional gallery work. Heavier on ideas than craftsmanship and loaded with energy, his drawings and sculpture put us in mind of Mike Kelley, who has repeatedly crossed the bridge from performance art to object making.

The main attraction in McCarthy’s show is a room-size kinetic sculpture called “Bavarian Kick.” It consists of a more or less round, elevated platform with two wooden doors facing each other. Periodically, the doors open to reveal mechanized male and female figures, dressed in thrift-shop Bavarian garb. They glide toward each other until they meet, then kick their left feet--touching their toes in a cute little dance step--and click their beer steins in unison. At the same time, they symbolically strike a rudimentary figure who crawls on all fours in the center of the platform. Once the deed is done, the couple retreats, only to repeat the process.

The piece is intended as an indictment of industrialized society, not necessarily German. We’re told that the art is in Bavarian dress simply because that part of the world seems to epitomize the mind-set that’s under scrutiny here. Accurately perceived or not, the stereotypic Bavarian taste for orderliness and kitsch fits McCarthy’s purpose. As this lumbering artwork grinds on and on, doling out mindless violence, it seems rather like a cuckoo clock designed by Hitler. Meanwhile, a deer watches from one wall of the gallery, but this symbol of all that is pure, natural and vulnerable is reduced to a gaudy reproduction.

McCarthy’s drawings, from a series called “Men With Corrupt Dreams and Aspirations,” appear to have been dashed off in a frenzy, using a brush loaded with venom. He portrays a Nazi soldier swilling beer and a woodsman chopping off another man’s head that’s due to fall from a tree stump onto a plate and become a “Swiss Dish.” Bringing his message about the abuse of power home to America, McCarthy also draws lusty, bare-bottomed oil men in 10-gallon hats dancing on a globe.

This is raw art that looks rather adolescent and it packs all the usual problems of political statements presented in the rarefied confines of galleries. Aesthetically, McCarthy vacillates between being a political marksman and an artist. While the drawings belt out his displeasure as directly and meagerly as possible, the sculpture is a complex construction that only looks primitive. The two halves of the show are glued together by anger, but the adhesive sticks and the art itself is indelibly stamped in our memories. (Rosamund Felsen Gallery, 669 N. La Cienega Blvd., to July 31.)