A Glimpse of ‘Reclusive Rebels’ : Art: Another exhibit shows appropriation of Canadian artist David Bierk.

The seven clans that make up the Sala Mpasu people of Zaire have steadfastly maintained their independence despite attempts at encroachment by neighboring tribes.

Scholarly efforts to penetrate their culture have likewise not been very successful or well-intentioned, biased as they have been by colonialistic attitudes that drew clear lines between civilized and primitive peoples.

A show like “Reclusive Rebels: An Approach to the Sala Mpasu and Their Neighbors,” now at the Mesa College Art Gallery, goes far to dispel such hierarchical notions and to eradicate use of the dated and ideologically loaded term primitive art . The visual sophistication and energy of the masks made by the Sala Mpasu, and the complexity of the role they play in the community’s social and economic life, are anything but primitive.

Guest curator Elisabeth Cameron, a doctoral candidate at UCLA who was born and raised in Zaire, the daughter of Protestant missionaries, gives a fine introduction to Sala Mpasu society in her wall texts and her essay for the show’s forthcoming catalogue.

As in many other tribal cultures, Sala Mpasu masks were used during rituals to mark important rites of passage, such as birth, puberty and death. They were also signifiers of wealth and power in a society where such prestige had to be earned and could not be inherited.

Certainly the 25 masks on view here convey a sense of authority and strength. Whether woven of raffia or other fibers, or carved of wood and sheathed in copper, the forms have commanding presence. The woven masks are oversized, with protruding brows, bulbous noses and often long, fibrous beards and tall feathered headdresses. The masks of wood tend to be more angular, with jutting chins and rectangular mouths of sharp teeth.

Though the forms often appear severe and threatening, Cameron points out that they relate more to the culture’s fashion than to a desire to convey ferocity. The pointed teeth in the wooden masks, for instance, recall a practice of filing teeth that is considered attractive for Sala Mpasu women and men, and the large woven knots on one of the fiber headdresses mimic a popular women’s hairstyle.

Several masks here from neighboring tribes make interesting comparisons with the Sala Mpasu works. A delicate mask of beaten copper from the Kongo-Dinga people and another of wood with precise, elegant features from the Chokwe culture offset the bolder, more dramatic shapes used by the Sala Mpasu. Photographs showing the masks as worn by Sala Mpasu men in raffia and animal skin garments help establish a sense of context for the masks, which have been gathered from private and public collections nationwide, including Mesa College’s own holdings.

Though curator Cameron’s approach to the Sala Mpasu material is necessarily scholarly, it is also broadly accessible, and the work itself has immediate, dynamic appeal. “Reclusive Rebels” presents a valuable new chapter to the history of African art and artifacts, a history to which no other local venue has paid much regard.

Mesa College Art Gallery, 7250 Mesa College Drive, 560-2600, open Thursday 11 a.m.-8:30 p.m., all other weekdays, 11 a.m.-4 p.m., through March27.

Canadian artist David Bierk has such reverence for painters of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries that he has willingly deferred his vision to theirs. What he does is called appropriation in current art jargon, and it has become a popular strategy for critiquing contemporary culture. In Bierk’s hands, however, the repetition of familiar images is less of a tool than an end in itself.

In his show at the Felicita Foundation in Escondido, titled “In the Absence of Paradise,” Bierk presents his own faithful copies of paintings by Gauguin, De Chirico, Manet, Bierstadt and others, sometimes with no additional commentary, sometimes in dialogue with other images.

In seven floral still-lifes after Manet, Bierk lovingly re-creates the French painter’s late studies of flowers in crystal vases against dark backgrounds. They are elegant works, but the credit here goes to Manet rather than to this contemporary copyist.

In another series, Bierk’s model is Monet. He repeats the same river view in each of nine paintings, but shifts his palette from the soft pinks of dusk to the luminous golds of mid-day, as Monet did a century ago in serial views of ponds filled with water lilies and other subjects.

According to the show’s press release, Bierk has stated that “he has finally been able to give up the struggle to develop a personal style, and paradoxically, this has liberated him to paint exactly what he wants.” Though Bierk is best at reminding us of the glorious talents of others, he does make a stab at a message of his own.

In the massive, multi-paneled work, “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? 100 Years Later, To Gauguin, Richter and Earth,” Bierk lauds the earthly integrity of Gauguin’s Tahitian subjects, while gently chastising our continent’s crude disregard for nature or humanity. He does this, albeit not very engagingly, by juxtaposing a copy of an elegiac painting of two candles by contemporary German artist Gerhard Richter with a copy of Gauguin’s 1897 masterwork referred to in the title, and a video monitor showing a collage of footage from the football field to the Gulf War.

If Bierk’s work is meant to draw attention to the gentle beauty of nature and its current, beleaguered state, it does so courtesy of artists born generations earlier. What the work does give meaning to is the so-called crisis of originality that so many contemporary artists subscribe to, in the belief that originality is impossible in this age of media saturation. While so much contemporary art disproves this theory, Bierk’s paintings demonstrate that for him, the crisis is real.

Felicita Foundation for the Arts, 247 S. Kalmia, Escondido, 743-3322. Open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Saturday, through April6. PUBLIC MEETING: Ocean Beach residents are invited to attend a public meeting to discuss their community’s participation in the city’s public art master plan. Ocean Beach is one of 10 local communities targeted to benefit from the program, which is funded by national, state and local arts agencies. The meeting will be held Thursday night from 6:30 to 8:30 at the Ocean Beach Elementary School cafeteria, 4741 Santa Monica Ave. For more information, call the city of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture at 533-3050.