Wilshire Center

In the late ‘60s Jim Evans was a successful graphic artist designing posters and album covers in the psychedelic style popular then. As a boy, the younger Richard Duardo hung out with gangs on the streets of East Los Angeles; today he is a master printer and computer artist whose prints are in museum collections.

The two artists share an interest in the abstraction, vivid coloration and high-contrast images of print, TV and graphic art. Their shared fascination for stardom has produced a collaborative series of prints featuring the famous and the fair, such as Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Madonna.

On view are canvas works that look as if they’ve been silk-screened with famous visages. The artists toy with and selectively alter popular images frozen in our brain by repetition--Madonna in profile, showing off the sinuous line of her neck, or the famous movie still of Raquel Welch barely clothed in Hollywood’s ridiculous version of cavewoman attire. The artists revitalize media shots with hand detail, poster art hues and bright silk-screened squiggles, but the works are the too-obvious progeny of Warhol’s famous people.

Most works remind us that, try as we may to ease our own anxiety by immortalizing our stars, they’ll all wither just like the rest of us. “The Monster” (from the vintage movie “Frankenstein”) and his consort, “The Bride,” work side by side as effective social comment and parody. Repeated views of the bare-chested weight lifter Lisa Lyon flexing her biceps as she unzips her Calvin Kleins simply emphasize that stars and their biographers tend to confuse narcissism with legitimate sensuality. (Zero One Gallery, 7025 Melrose Ave., to July 20.)