Barnsdall Assembles 2 Wry Exhibitions

Two exhibitions of local contemporaries at Barnsdall Art Park are exceptionally smart, oblique and mordant. “Trash” at the Municipal Art Gallery was selected by guest curator Catherine Lord. She presents 10 artists who inherited the mantle of ‘50s L.A. Assemblage. The presence of veteran junk artist John Outterbridge attests to the genealogy.

His “The Treasure of Blight: Carnival of a Missing Mule” is a classic piece of poetic found-object fusion concocted of a rusty bike and bedsprings. Basically it’s about not letting a bad start get you down.

Most other artists use less time-honored materials. Most are more politically engaged than they appear. Blessedly, all manage to recall that paradox is just as powerful as ideology. They avoid both self-congratulatory moralizing and the superior sneers that give irony a bad name.

Susan Choi’s “Fantasy Island” collages naughty photos and poster-style paintings of the artist as a bare-breasted hula dancer and all-round seductress. It seems to be a winsomely conflicted autobiographical fantasy. On one hand, she satirizes the white male daydream about licentious Asian sex kittens; on the other, she thinks wrapping such men around her little finger might be rather delicious revenge.

“Two Men Making Gun Sounds” is a two-monitor video piece by Anne Walsh. True to the title it presents head-shots of a couple of young adult males impersonating bazookas, heavy artillery, heat-seeking missiles and six-guns, among other weapons. Any guy who objects to this delicious deflation of male stereotypes just doesn’t have a sense of humor.

General social absurdity gets politely expressed in Simon Leung’s “Proposal for ‘Surf Vietnam.’ ” It consists of 19 roughly surfboard-shaped plastic slabs carrying an enlarged reproduction of a news clip from 1992. It reports a plan by American Vietnam veterans to return to China Beach to teach the natives how to surf. In the film “Apocalypse Now,” a GI is depicted there riding the waves while the population gets strafed.

Sam Durant finds more cultural weirdness by simply collaging pages from underground publications offering demeaning day jobs to members of the punk community.

An engagingly quirky sensibility wafts from the work of Cirilo Domine. “Spoon” is just that, in wood, but it’s about 12 feet long and resembles a carved oar for a traditional Pacific Island canoe. At one end there’s a ladle-size bowl, at the other a tiny depression, like a teaspoon. Since you can’t eat from either, the piece is either oblique social protest or classic Dada, or both.

For those who associate activities like painting and drawing with hopelessly outmoded art, “Trash” offers welcome contradiction. M.A. Peers makes monumental portraits of dogs on recycled furniture upholstery. Deep meanings aside, they’re nice paintings. So are TV-based panels by Soraya Muhlert from a series the artist calls “Exotic Native Voodoo Zombies With Promising Economic Value.” Drawings depicting old-fashioned toilets by Margaret Morgan make this humble receptacle appear elegant and mysteriously complex.

Tammy Fites’ “Butterfly Box” is a showstopper despite some muddled expressive moves. Clearly a homage to Edward Kienholz, it presents the interior of a run-down dwelling. The living room is carpeted with white surgical cotton and furnished with thrift-shop furniture suggesting the inhabitants got their idea of elegance from a pilgrimage to Graceland. Instead of dust, there is glitter. Instead of hungry moths, sequined butterflies hang from the ceiling.

You cross a garden court. Every tree and plant is dead. In contrast to the ludicrous formality of the parlor, every day living quarters combine a predictably messy kitchen and kids’ beds strewn with pretty stuff like a pink ballet costume. The work seems to want to limit itself to a commentary on mindless consumerism and the tribulations of old age. It’s actually better than that.

Over at the Junior Art Center, in the same Barnsdall complex, Municipal Art Gallery curator Noel Corten presents “Nancy Kyes: Related Matter.” It’s the debut solo of an artist who had incarnations as actress, costume designer and mother before being more or less traumatized into art. Her use of precious old junk links her to the “Trash” show, but her spirit is more metaphysical.

Kyes’ most prepossessing work is “Plow: The Border Between Two Orders.” At 7 feet tall, it looks like a tornado of memorabilia. Its wall label dutifully lists every material sucked into the vacuum, and it’s longer than this review. There’s a strange sort of relaxed ferocity about the work that suggests everything from “The Wizard of Oz” to the Hindu creator-destroyer goddess Kali.

Indian mythology also inspired Kyes “Chakra” series. The seven works relate to steps of enlightenment in the Hindic cosmology. Each looks rather like an oversized Easter basket dominated by a single color. All manage to avoid being merely decorative or nostalgic. In this impressive debut, Kyes fuses her elements into a new entity suggesting organic life. She puts one in mind of Simon Rodia.

* Barnsdall Art Park, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., through April 5, closed Mondays and Tuesdays, (213) 485-4581.