La Cienega Area

Chris Kidd and Gregg Bayne share a perverse humorous angle on a couple of our hallowed institutions. In small acrylic paintings, Kidd satirizes the innocence of childhood and nature, while Bayne’s mixed-media double portraits poke poignant fun at love relationships.

Kidd gives us Bert (of Sesame Street fame) trapped in a vortex of color with a mean toy lion peering down from an upper corner. In another work, a tiny toy car that kiddies push about to make little silver bells ring is commandeered by a wizened, gray-haired skeleton. A lot of this stuff looks like a forced melange of popular culture and folk art. In “Sheep” and “Food Chain”--a misty shore where a carnivorous toy cat devours dying fish--Kidd locates his own bizarrely spunky voice.

In an unfettered, cartoon-like style that looks as if shapes are first laid down quickly with a monotype press and detailed by hand, Bayne creates telling scenes of couples sitting mutely, walking the dog or trudging through foliage. In “The Box,” a red-haired nude huddles in a transparent cube while her hapless lover sits on top frantically trying to pry the enclosure open. In several other works, the same blond fellow wearing the same trendy yellow tie (and often nothing else) is beguiled by a poker-faced gal and her pet serpent or dwarfed by an Amazon date at the seashore. The narrative of sexual politics is old as Eden; Bayne’s modernized version is brightly hued and lighthearted, appealing more to our fancy than our gray matter. (Ivey Gallery, 154 N. La Brea Ave., to May 7.)