Cynicism Underlies Artist Mark Heresy’s Heresies : Art: Exhibits in Laguna Beach and Hollywood display the satiric style of the man who calls himself a cultural saboteur.

Mark Heresy says he hates art.

Sure, people call him an artist. His work is displayed in art galleries and museums, and much of it has been purchased by art connoisseurs.

But Heresy sees himself as not so much an artist as a cultural saboteur.

Although skilled and formally trained in the finer techniques of visual art, he has concentrated much of his creative effort on, for example, constructing donation boxes, such as the ones seen in the lobbies of offices seeking contributions for a charitable cause or to a Christmas party fund.

Heresy’s donation boxes hang from the walls of galleries instead of offices but serve a similar purpose. As typewritten signs above some of the boxes explain, Heresy is a young, struggling artist who needs money. And he’s asking you, the art patron, to give generously.

Heresy’s devotees call these boxes revolutionary art. His critics call them sophomoric tripe. Whichever camp you choose to side with, Heresy welcomes--and encourages--your response.

He has, in fact, fashioned yet another pair of boxes to elicit responses from gallery-hoppers: Those viewing his current exhibit at the Zero One Gallery here are asked to vote whether they think “Mark Heresy is God” or “Mark Heresy is an (adjective deleted).”

And, while casting your ballot, you’re advised that for “only $75” you may join either the Church of Mark Heresy or the Committee to Stop Mark Heresy Because He is an (adjective deleted).

The way Heresy sees it, a vote to stop him is at least as valuable as one to elevate him to godhead. “If people are neutral to you as an artist, you’re forgotten. But if you can get them to hate you a lot or love you a lot,” you’re OK, says the 25-year-old Los Angeles resident while looking over his Zero One installation, called “Can You Spare Any Change?”

Of course, the boxes, like many of his works, are dripping with satire. But Heresy, as his pseudonym suggests, also aims to challenge and undermine conventional thinking. Even a cursory examination of his work reveals his attempts to rattle the foundation of traditional American values, politics, corporatism and symbolic patriotism.

In a separate exhibit titled “Flags,” now being shown at the Laguna Art Museum, he has created a series of American flag replicas from such materials as red, white and blue toilet paper, cut currency, beer cans, human hair and dirt.

Each of the pieces uses the nation’s symbol of freedom to make a statement about the peculiar ways in which Heresy sees American freedom manifesting and contradicting itself, through militarism, consumerism and greed.

(One of his flags--”Freedom of the Press,” made from porno magazine photographs--was not taken by the museum for the exhibit. Heresy says the piece is an attempt to illustrate that America purports to stand for freedom yet institutionalizes censorship.)

His intention with all the flags, he says, is to force the viewer to re-examine his or her conditioned response to the Stars and Stripes.

“It’s so strange. People have this allegiance, this obedience to this flag. I think of all these tough Marines . . . being cowered into submission by a little strip of fabric. That’s a lot of power for a fabric to have.”

To underscore his point, Heresy is working on a final addition to his series of flags, one constructed of whips, leather and other sado-masochistic paraphernalia. “There really is this S&M; dominance thing with the flag,” he explains. “People are almost wanting to be dominated by a thing, and they choose to be dominated by an icon--an icon which represents an ideology.”

Reflecting the same sort of cynicism with which he attacks American conservatism, Heresy’s flags, donation boxes and collages of pop-culture artifacts also seek to subvert established approaches to rebellion and art--the very modes within which he works.

He is not only laughing along with the artists and radicals at the hypocrisy they see in mainstream society. He is laughing at them --and himself as well.

For example, with his “assignment pieces,” in which he requests that patrons buy him lunch or give him him new ideas for future works, Heresy says he is only half-kidding.

“Don’t come here expecting me to give something to you, as artists are traditionally supposed to do,” he says. “I’m trying to destroy some of the meaning you’re already carrying with you (into an art gallery). I try to absorb the audience, so a person can leave this space . . . with a little less baggage. Maybe you saw something here that upset you, but at least you left with a little less baggage.”

Although trained at Otis Parsons art school and the California Institute for the Arts, Heresy says he has little interest in revered artists throughout history. In fact, he has fashioned paintings that mock the canonization of such artists as Jasper Johns.

“I like very few so-called artists,” he says, almost boastfully. Among the few exceptions, he says, are Mike Kelly, Jeffrey Vallance, Robert Williams and Haim Steinbach--his main artistic idol--who skewed Andy Warhol’s approach to pop-culture-as-art by creating art pieces comprised of shelves of common household items.

But Heresy said his deeper influences lean more toward the late French philosopher Michel Foucault, Abbie Hoffman, Malcolm X, Mad Magazine and punk rock. He “grew up in the slam pits of L.A.” and says that former Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra “is one of the first artists who really kicked me in the head.”

One of his chief concerns, he says, is art’s economic structure. “There is very little support within an economic structure to develop new ways of thinking or perceiving. I can’t take my paintings to a grocery store and say, hey, can I have food for a week? . . . There is no market (for new art) until you enter into another economic structure, which is the art market: the art schools, art galleries (and) art magazines that make up this art culture.”

Support from the National Endowment for the Arts is not a viable alternative, he says. Even before the stipulation was attached to grants that an artist will not produce work that the agency might consider obscene, Heresy said he would never consider accepting NEA funding.

“It’s like getting a check from mom. (Recipients) will start to cater no matter what.”

Perhaps his most ardent disdain, however, is reserved for art critics. He says he pays no attention to critical assessment of his works, whether positive or negative. He says his work, and indeed “the character of Mark Heresy that I have created,” are set up to alienate the art critic.

“An art critic has an agenda, (based upon) the way he thinks,” Heresy says. “He goes around and he tries to find someone to use as a springboard that supports his ideas. Whether he puts down your work or praises it, all he’s doing is using this work to reinforce something he believes.”

For his part, Heresy shows no sign of muzzling his beliefs.

The working title for his next exhibit: “Tolerate This Because It’s Art, and Patronize Me Because I’m an Artist.”