Exhibits Against AIDS : Series at three locations citywide features free displays, readings and performances by and about people with HIV.

Vibrant abstract painted landscapes share wall space with stark black-and-white photographs of people close to death. Vital angels dominate a few canvases; tormented human likenesses are the focus of others.

These images are among works by 20 artists on view at McGroarty Arts Center in Tujunga, one of three art venues for “TranscEND AIDS,” the citywide series of free art exhibits, readings and performances by and about people with HIV/AIDS.

Organized by the Cultural Affairs Department as part of an “AIDS Awareness” project, exhibits are also on display at the Watts Towers Arts Center and the William Grant Still Arts Center in the mid-city area. Performances and readings take place at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in downtown Los Angeles.

“I wanted to find some way to bring awareness of AIDS in 1993 to as many areas of Los Angeles as possible. To speak to an audience different than the usual audience,” said Ferd Eggan, the city’s AIDS coordinator. “It seemed one of the most useful ways was through artists who are living with AIDS or those close to people with AIDS. Art does have a way of communicating that printed material or lecture formats or discussions people sometimes have about AIDS do not.

“One way AIDS is felt is through the disappearance of people contributing to our cultural life. This (series) is an attempt by the city to not just memorialize those who have died with AIDS, but to recognize the vital contributions that people with AIDS are making today right in our neighborhoods.”

During the summer, the city put out an open call to artists to take part in “TranscEND AIDS.” Its curator, Guillermo Hernandez, said he accepted all of the works that were submitted.

“Here are artists who want to participate in this exhibition, who are willing in a way to come out about their status and their sexuality,” Hernandez said. “I thought that was quite a big gesture.”

The sensitive black-and-white portraits of individuals suffering from acquired immune deficiency syndrome represent a collaboration between Gigi Ridgeway and Robert Zuckerman. They are volunteers in an AIDS hospice.

Patti Chastain Haag painted the bright, abstract visions that suggest flowers, rainbows, landscapes of hope. R. D. Riccoboni’s colorful views of a beach and a park scene are tempered by a close look at the trees in the paintings. Red ribbons--a symbol of the fight against AIDS--have been tied around their trunks.

Ray Navarro was already disabled and in the hospital when he collaborated with Zoe Leonard to produce a series of three photographs. Each image uses an object associated with disabled people to comment on their predicament, and to remind us that the heart and the mind can carry on undaunted even when the body fails. An overturned wheelchair is all we see in the picture labeled “Hot Butt.” A walker is down in “Stud Walk,” and an upside-down cane is the “Third Leg.”

Hernandez said Navarro died soon after those images were completed.

Among the works of mostly local artists--several of them from the San Fernando Valley--are two posters by German artist Stefan Thiel. Eggan met Thiel at an AIDS conference in Berlin, where the artist lives. The posters, in German with an English translation provided, have been put up in a classroom. They contain messages that could generate a variety of responses regarding AIDS and homosexual men.

“The posters are in a room where people are educated. I wanted to give people information that will make them think,” Thiel said. “It is important for me to bring discrimination against gay men out in the open, and to talk about the self-discrimination of minorities.”

Eggan recently spoke to an artist friend who has AIDS. His friend said that, based on current public discourse, he feels the general perception is that AIDS is over.

“We have to keep reminding people that it’s not over,” Eggan said. “I hope that it will be important while looking at art in the ‘TranscEND’ show to see many different kinds of people with AIDS and to have some compassion for what people are going through.”

He also hopes the series will encourage people to “protect themselves from what is a very difficult and life-threatening disease.”

“The point is to end AIDS,” Hernandez said.

WHERE AND WHEN

* What: “TranscEND AIDS” art exhibit.

* Location: McGroarty Arts Center, 7570 McGroarty Terrace, Tujunga.

* Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Ends Nov. 21.

* Price: All events free.

* Call: (818) 352-5285.

* Also: “Readings/Choreopoems” at 8 tonight at Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., Los Angeles. Call (213) 485-6320.