ART REVIEW : Berlant’s Pictorial Synthesis of L.A. in the ‘90s : The artist creates collages that make up a frank and personal narrative of his town.

If Tony Berlant were one of Dorothy’s three companions on the way to Oz, he’d have to be the Tin Woodsman. For decades now, the L.A. artist has made art by attaching pretty, colored found metal to various supports. He tacks the cast-off material in place using a multitude of steel brads shot from a nail gun. This gives the work a loving-hands-at-home look, something between a quilt and an African fetish.

For much of his career he made little reliquary houses and large Industrial-Age temples that rarely captured the magic that seemed potential in the form. In recent years he’s taken a pictorial turn, causing the work to blossom into important art.

The current batch, published in a nice catalogue, includes at least four large, museum-quality works. High on that short list is “L.A.X.” Berlant’s art is frankly and touchingly autobiographical. One work is but an aesthetic transformation of a page from his date book.

“L.A.X.” concerns the artist’s Los Angeles. Its background is an aerial photo of a fraction of the town seen from the Venice shoreline. Hidden somewhere amid all the typical Angeltown anonymity are Berlant’s gallery, studios present and past and the digs of most of his friends.

Sounds a bit like an oversized sentimental snapshot, but there is more. Superimposed on the photo are shapes that look like something borrowed from Marcel Duchamp’s Dada masterpiece “The Large Glass.” Partly it’s an homage to Duchamp’s importance to Lotusland art but, thank goodness, there is more than that too.

All these works are from the ‘90s, during which time the town has been racked with riot, fiscal anxiety and social erosion. “L.A.X.” really addresses the all-too-plausible fantasy of a once-Edenic place in the grip of some monster escaped from a sci-fi thriller.

“Held Up” re-creates a night not long ago when Berlant was robbed at gunpoint as he left his car near his Santa Monica studio. He is at pains to point out that the band of pint-sized assailants couldn’t have been more polite and that--as muggings go--this one was very civilized.

The image tells another story. The thick frame includes a spectral drawing of one robber rendered in graffiti style. The large photo of Berlant in hands-up posture is mantled in deep cobalt blue. The mysterious color is usually as soothing as getting home after a long day, but Berlant nudges it into an atmosphere of terror.

He tries to keep a light touch in “The Cops and Me.” To make it he went to Mexico and commissioned sign painters to render his stories of encounters with the police according to their own imaginations. He thinks the humble craftsmen’s style looks like the funk of contemporary Los Angeles.

The dozen images that make up the composition record everything from a virtual police riot against nonviolent demonstrators in Century City in the ‘60s to memories of a helpful cop who escorted the tardy artist to catch a plane. Berlant has been detained for looking like a bank robber and a drug mule. One night the law invaded the bedroom he shared with his girlfriend when they forgot to disarm their silent alarm. Somehow Berlant’s tolerant touch only deepens uneasiness with the notion of a peaceful artist being collared so often.

Like much of the best L.A. art, Berlant’s mature work is synthetic. Not synthetic in the sense of fake, synthetic in the sense of blended. The Assemblage movement and Ed Keinholz live in his technique. His narrative has a touch of Baldessariesque conceptualism but you’d never mistake him for either of them. Berlant has taken the L.A. art recipe and made his own cake.

L.A. Louver Gallery, 77 Market St., Venice; through May 1, (310) 822-4955.