Festival ’90 : ART REVIEW : L.A. FESTIVAL : Conal Brings Politics, Wit to Armory : Satire: In his first one-man show, guerrilla artist Robbie Conal lampoons political figures in a trenchant series of posters and paintings.

So many bad guys, so little time. Artist Robbie Conal has become something of a cult hero in these parts, masterminding droves of volunteers to blizzard the urban scene with his small posters of political personalities. These famous faces, limned with tense jaws, cruelly magnified facial lines and stiffly creamed and lacquered hair, have come to serve as a rogues’ gallery of power brokers who have betrayed public trust.

Conal’s first one-man show, at the Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts through Nov. 9, includes the lithographed posters and the paintings on which they are based.

In both media, Conal’s sting takes effect via the mercilessly literal scrutiny of the portraiture and the punchy, often punning titles that skirt agit-prop to register sly dissent.

Most familiar of the posters is the “Men With No Lips” set: sober, familiar-looking, black-and-white head shots of Ronald Reagan, Donald Regan, James Baker III and Caspar Weinberger, each pursing and pinching his lips in a paroxysm of constipated effort.

More recent editions include “Blow Hard”--an image of Jimmy Swaggart against a gold background, with the gold Gothic lettering referring to his well-publicized sexual escapades--and “Plan Ahead,” the colorized head of an idiotically grinning Dan Quayle superimposed on a black-and-white portrait of George Bush.

The posters are meant to be encountered on the fly, of course, juxtaposed casually with scudding trash, moving feet and a plethora of other posters advertising a product or endorsing a candidate. Despite the exhibit’s attempt at simulated tackiness--a plywood wall stamped “post no bills”--the posters no longer seem unusual or puzzling in a gallery setting.

But Conal’s paintings are really at the heart of the show. Meticulously detailed with thick ridges and pools of black and white paint, they remind the viewer of the curious ambivalence of Conal’s art--at once traditional and hip; Populist and media-aware, yet steeped in the verities of high art.

A former student of Bay Area painters Frank Lobdell and Nathan Oliveira, Conal was enthralled by history painting and bowled over by Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment.” In a multipanel work, “Foreign Policy,” from 1983-84, the artist juxtaposed images of the deal-makers (Reagan, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz and others) with women holding photos of servicemen (presumably dead or missing in action) and unspecific nude, tormented figures recoiling at unseen forces.

In short order, Conal edited out his awkward attempt at Michelangelesque posturing and concentrated instead on the iconic power of media images. Particularly in the outsized works--like the two 8-foot-tall canvases of “Doublespeak,” in which covered microphones and whispered consultations link the lies and evasions of Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn with those of Oliver North and Brendan Sullivan--Conal’s brand of realism is marked by an apparent transparency.

The portraits seem to leap directly from news photographs to the canvas, where they are delineated with hyper-sensitive attention to detail. One troubling issue about Conal’s work is whether he properly questions and challenges the shaping power of the media in creating the images he uses so freely and with such finesse. But the dominating presence, snappy wit and broadly communicative power of the work is never in question.

Armory Center for the Arts, 145 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena; to Nov. 9.