ART REVIEW : Straight From the Heart Catharsis: ‘AIDS: Fear, Rage, Hope,’ a powerful exhibition at Balboa Park, leaves an unforgettable impression.

From the exterior, there is nothing immediately intimidating about the 91-piece exhibition “AIDS: Fear, Rage, Hope,” which opened last night in a simple white tent temporarily raised in front of the Federal Building in Balboa Park. A humble setting in an easily accessible area, the venue is designed to be as welcoming and unpretentious as possible.

But when you get inside, the work hits you over the head.

This is a show of anger. Fury, even. It is about feeling helpless, hopeless, tragically sad and completely desperate. The art displayed here, much of which is very simple in its presentation, is completely charged by its message that AIDS is a devastating disease that already has touched far too many people.

Organized by AIDS Art Alive, a nonprofit San Diego arts organization founded in 1986 to help people use the

visual arts to “promote positive individual and community responses to the AIDS epidemic,” the show includes works by artists from throughout the United States and was juried by a panel of artists and AIDS activists.

Most shows of this sort tend to emphasize art that succeeds as a therapeutic outpouring, but they often fail as visual exhibitions. Therapy does not always produce important art. This show, however, for the most part, is equally strong in sentiment, content and form. Many of these works are startlingly powerful. Many of them are unforgettable.

Among the most distressing is a pastel drawing by Gregory Edison titled “Where Have All My Friends Gone?” The picture shows an arrangement of picture frames with just blackness where portraits should be. The image of loss and death is made devastatingly real.

Undoubtedly the most impressive work in the show is one titled “Quagmire,” submitted by an anonymous artist--the only such unclaimed work in the show.

In this mixed-media work, a purple-painted, cutout canvas figure is attached to a wooden cross, one of many crucifix images here. The man’s hands, however, appear to be tearing open his chest, and the canvas has been split almost the full length of the torso.

Where his guts should be, the artist has placed a series of printed messages telling why he has not signed the work. The reasons, in sequence, become increasingly shocking and sad. The artist does not want his mother to know that he is HIV-infected because she would think she failed as a mother. His father would blame everyone but himself. The kids at the school where he teaches wouldn’t be allowed to attend for fear of catching the disease. His wife’s social life would be ruined. And, finally, the artist himself admits that taking credit for the work--admitting to his own disease--would mean that he would have to face the reality of his own mortality.

“After my body is weak and thin, and my mind is confused and the look of death is in my sunken eyes, then I will sign this piece of art if it is still in existence,” he writes. “Because then it will not matter.”

It is a work that needs no explanation. Its pathos and bitter anger are conveyed equally in the hue of the paint, the pose of the splayed body and the simple directness of the message. The light, almost flimsy canvas belies the violence of the fate that this man feels awaits him.

This unsigned work does something else, too. It inadvertently pays homage to all those other artists who did sign their names to their works, to all those who have had the courage and/or support to feel safe in identifying themselves with their suffering.

This show is not just about firsthand experiences with HIV and AIDS. It is also about confronting the loss on every level. And, as such, it can be either frightening or cathartic. One very beautiful work by John Schlesinger shows a simple line drawing of a face with a mixed expression of surprise and fear rendered in thick black paint across a collage of obituaries of men. Each death notice is accompanied by a photo, making them very real and very personal. All of the clippings are lined up and pasted down, leaving just one rectangle of open white space--room, one might assume, for the artist himself.

In another work, Bruce Eves has blown up a photograph and overlaid it with simple graphic text that makes it look almost like a billboard advertisement. Three emaciated men emerge from half shadows, and the bold lettering says, simply, “Burn the Quilt.” It is a protest against the numbers who have died and been commemorated and metaphorically sanitized in the now-famous AIDS quilt. This work succinctly portrays some AIDS activists’ openly expressed feeling that the quilt is now nothing more that an emblem of a problem that still has no solution.

Some of the show’s works are simpler--a portrait of a son, a fantastical drawing of death. But it is always clear that all of this work comes straight from the heart, which doesn’t make the message any easier to digest.

This is a show that should be seen. It provides an opportunity to learn what people who are suffering are feeling.

It could help us help them make a difference.

“AIDS: Fear, Rage, Hope” continues through Wednesday in the tent in front of the Federal Building in Balboa Park. Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. From Friday through Oct. 6 the show will be on view at the South Bay Recreational Center, 1885 Coronado Ave., San Diego. Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Its final destination, Oct. 8-10, is the Community Concourse downtown, 202 C St. outside City Hall. Hours there will be 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.