ART : Exhibit Shows That a Gulf Exists on the Concept of a ‘Just War’ : Posters and other works at a nonprofit gallery in Laguna Beach dramatically show that there was opposition to the short-lived Middle East conflict.

During the Gulf War, I noticed a tiny gold peace symbol hanging from the neck of a 40-ish Orange County woman I know--a memento from the ‘60s. The woman smiled as she talked about it, recalling the reaction of her young son. “Mom, President Bush isn’t going to see you wearing that,” he told her. “It won’t do any good.”

It’s tempting to feel the same way about anti-war art. It preaches to the already committed. Those who disagree generally don’t bother to look in the first place, and people in power pay little attention to contemporary art of any kind, unless it is the focus of outcry from organized conservative groups.

But because of the overwhelming American popularity and surprising brevity of Operation Desert Storm, an exhibit reacting to the war is something of a curiosity, even if it opens after the war is over. Other than sparse media coverage of anti-war demonstrations--in which wild-eyed weirdos seemed a good deal more prominent than thoughtfully troubled citizens--we haven’t heard much from the opposition this time around. The immediate aftermath of the war, with its crush of yellow ribbons, brass bands, joyous homecomings and patriotic bereavements, has overshadowed dissent.

At BC Space, the nonprofit gallery in Laguna Beach, owner Mark Chamberlain said he felt compelled to mount “Just War,” even though the war was over by the time he had collected sufficient material for the show. “ ‘Just War’ is presented by, and dedicated to, all those for whom there can be no just war,” reads a small sign hanging in the gallery.

Unsurprisingly, the quality of the art is uneven, much of it flat-footed and obvious. As is common in political art shows, single-minded passion often seems to leap directly from the heart to the handiwork without undergoing any visible artistic metamorphosis.

There are a few exceptions, which either take a complex approach to the general issue of war or target specific issues of this war in a fresh and pointed way.

Angie Bray’s installation, “They Say if You Put Water and Salt on Ashes, Something Will Grow,” is a deeply ironic piece in a somberly delicate guise. On a series of skinny unpainted wooden shelves, rows of cracked black eggshells reveal only dirt and pebbles. The words of the title are handwritten in fragile-looking capital letters on a yardstick-size piece of wood leaning against the shelves in the manner of a homemade grave marker.

The “somethings” that “grow” in the piece are empty, cracked cradles of death. But Bray may be suggesting that the old wives’ tale of the title contains useful advice if interpreted in a metaphoric way. By adding “salt”--skepticism--to accounts of the war dead, what may grow is a renewed appreciation of the devastation and futility of war.

The combination of a verbal reference to ashes and the presence of earth and eggshells add a resonant elemental quality. The accident of timing that places the exhibit at the beginning of spring, near Easter, also adds poignancy to the mock hopefulness of the death-and-resurrection theme at the core of the piece.

More specifically about the Gulf War, posters borrowed from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles offer the immediate, one-two punch of a good advertisement. A poster by an artist identified only as D. Minkler makes the observation that Mobil Chemical Co. is the manufacturer of Hefty Bags, the “official bag of Operation Desert Storm.”

The brief text is illustrated with a colorful cartoon-like soldier making his way through an environment of palm trees, exploding minefields and warplanes. His ballooning midsection is labeled “Hefty,” suggesting a devastating linkage of oil company interests and the war deaths of soldiers, and slyly suggesting to the viewer that this soldier may indeed be encased in a bag someday--a body bag.

Paul Darrow’s strategy in “War Casualty” is hardly new, but it conveys its message crisply. A neat grid of identical color photographs of a human head in the sand and an upraised arm sticking out of a trench comment on the repetitiousness of death, at once a shocking individual tragedy and a pattern of war.

For some reason, no one chose to emphasize the computer-assisted, surgical strike aspect of the war, and only one artist (David Levy, whose previous work was based on TV images) dealt with the war as a media artifact. Instead, the response was mainly a host of gut reactions expressed in basic, often simple-minded ways, a cacophony of easily dismissible shouts and lamentations.

Walter Reiss plunks objects representing Patriot and Scud missiles in a little red wagon and calls the piece “Mine Is Bigger Than Yours,” to point up his view of the childishness of the conflict and its connection with male obsession over genital size. Karl Matson tosses some burned toast into a metal box bearing the word Coke spelled out in little holes (“It’s the Real Thing”). In “Martyred,” Desiree Engel offers sculptural paper images of a shrouded mother and open-mouthed child.

In “Documentary/Abstract/Objective,” Hanh Thi Pham asserts that the “U.S. cause continues” and offers as evidence recent photographs of seriously wounded Vietnamese children who stepped on still-active mines.

These images are cruel and sad, but the artist doesn’t seem to acknowledge how accustomed we are to seeing devastating images in the news. She allows the rest of the piece to sag into rote condemnation of U.S. intervention rather than finding a way to frankly acknowledge the callousness of contemporary reactions to disaster photographs--particularly when the viewers are white Americans and the people in the photographs are from the Third World.

Daniel Martinez’s “Pro War” piece is rather diffuse, burdened by the artist’s apparent attempt to say the same thing several ways. A camouflage-print handkerchief with a large star and crescent is overprinted with the phrases “Arsenal of Democracy,” “Crisis of Authority” and (continuously repeated like the words of a mantra) “Someone has to do it.”

On a shelf below it are cans of government-issue “emergency drinking water” and water-filled Mason jars (one, labeled “poor and working class,” also holds green toy soldiers; another contains an American flag). Does Martinez mean to equate the emergency rations with the way the U.S. looks to its poor at a time of emergency? The point seems oddly muffled.

In the end, a lot of energy seems to have been expended in this show without an equal amount of analysis or fresh infusion of metaphor. You might say this failing is a harmless version of the very same rashness and lack of deliberation for which the anti-war faction criticized the U.S. in its handling of the Gulf conflict.