Taking a look back at Guerrilla Girls’ shots at the mainstream art world.

A clandestine group of artistic guerrillas from New York say that in the art world, women and minorities have often been denied a seat at the table.

An exhibit featuring posters by the female artists who call themselves the Guerrilla Girls, along with a show by Los Angeles artist Margaret Lazzari, opens Saturday at the Laband Art Gallery in the Fritz B. Burns Fine Arts Center at Loyola Marymount University.

A symposium titled “The Woman Artist in American Cultural Life: Past, Present and Beyond 2000,” precedes the opening in the center’s Murphy Recital Hall.

“Guerrilla Girls Talk Back: A Retrospective, 1985-1990,” is a multimedia exhibit with posters, banners, a slide show, and videotapes and audiotapes, said Carrie Lederer, curator of San Rafael’s Falkirk Cultural Center and organizer of the traveling exhibit.

“Their work is about access to the system--who has it and who doesn’t,” Lederer said. “They target the inequities that exist in the art world for women and people of color.”

In 1985, sarcastic and informative posters charging mainstream art institutions with sexism and racism began appearing around Manhattan.

One early poster asked: “How many women had one-person exhibitions at New York museums last year?” The answer was one.

Another poster charges that women artists in America earn only one-third of what their male counterparts do.

The posters were signed by the Guerrilla Girls, who call themselves the “Conscience of the Art World.” Many people suspect that the elusive group includes some well-known female artists, Lederer said. But they choose to remain anonymous, donning gorilla masks in public, to keep the focus on the issues they raise.

“Middle Managers, Bureaucrats and Young Entrepreneurs” is Margaret Lazzari’s response to the pressures and manipulations of the corporate world. Her charcoal drawings and acrylic paintings of white-collar executives challenge the models of success marketed in business magazines.

“The corporate world and its power structures shape people, their expectations and desires,” Lazzari said.

Through her selection of colors and arresting images, Lazzari portrays expressions of arrogance, aggression, frustration and insecurity. Lazzari said she hopes people will view her characters sympathetically.

“When people look at these pictures,” she said, “I hope they will be able to identify them as people they know or as themselves.”

The two exhibits run until Feb. 29 and are sponsored by the university’s Office of Continuing Studies and the women’s studies department. “Guerrilla Girls Talk Back” is funded in part by the Eileen and Peter Norton Foundation of Santa Monica.

The Laband Art Gallery is open 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and noon to 4 p.m. on Saturdays.

What: Symposium and exhibits by the Guerrilla Girls and Margaret Lazzari.

Where: Burns Fine Arts Center, Loyola Marymount University, Loyola Boulevard at West 80th Street, Los Angeles.

When: Saturday’s symposium begins at 3 p.m.; opening reception at 4 p.m.

Admission: $1 or two bananas.

Information: (310) 338-2880.