With its one-man assembly line, ‘The Miracle Half Mile’ is all about selling its paintings. But its execution delivers a profound message.

Until I visited “The Miracle Half Mile: Ten Thousand Paintings by Stephen Keene,” I’d never been to an exhibition where the catalog costs more than most of the works.

Neither had I been to a museum where all of the art is for sale. On the honor system no less: Just slip your money through the slot in the blue box in the middle of the Santa Monica Museum of Art and take a painting (or two or three) with you. Cash and carry. It’s easier than parking in a self-paying lot. No fuss. No cheerful chatter or snobby condescension from salespeople.

And the art doesn’t cost much more than parking your car. Hand-painted signs (which are made from the same materials as the paintings) inform visitors that the thousands of acrylics on panel that have been hung floor to ceiling, stacked against the walls (like albums in record bins) and jammed into Santa-size sacks among piles of similarly painted benches, are priced according to size--XS: $3; S: $5; M: $10; L: $15; XL: $25; XXL: ask. One hundred dollars will reserve you a bench, which will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis when the show closes on Jan. 27. Catalogs, with hand-painted covers, cost $10.

This is no ordinary show. Nor is the Brooklyn-based painter an ordinary artist. His openly commercial venture demonstrates that when it comes to art, business as usual is a pretty twisted business indeed. Amid the contagious holiday frivolity and giddy, everyone’s-a-collector anti-elitism propagated by “The Miracle Half Mile” lurks the sadness of a dead-end job: nothing like being unemployed but dispiriting nonetheless.

Keene’s multilayered exhibition is not just a cheeky critique of high-priced art. While it does take the popular accessibility of Warhol’s mass-produced images to the next level, it simultaneously reveals the difficulties of making a living as an artist in America. For viewers, it doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to see that what Keene’s exhibition says about being an artist also applies to other lines of work: Finding a satisfying job at a decent wage is a problem.

Keene is a showman who knows a thing or two about getting your attention. From the second you step into the museum’s ordinarily undecorated entryway, you know you’re in for a dose of visual overload more common to malls crowded with holiday shoppers than to art galleries.

Hundreds of garish paintings cover every square inch of the 12-foot walls. Swiftly rendered faces stare out among slapdash landscapes, ghastly renditions of Renaissance masterpieces and hastily painted captions. Brush strokes angled every which way create a whirlpool of visual energy that sucks you in with dizzying efficiency. Impressive in its own right--and filled with enough work for a standard solo show--this is just the beginning.

*

In the main gallery, Keene pumps things up exponentially. An attendant welcomes visitors and lays out the rules, in the matter-of-fact, I’m-just-doing-my-job tone of an overworked postal employee. Although it’s a little obnoxious to enter a museum and have your conversation with the art interrupted by the staff, it’s not nearly as bad as hard-sell art dealers who pounce immediately, extolling the virtues of the works before you have a chance to look for yourself.

Completely covering one wall is a series of 12-foot-by-8-foot landscapes that offer a panoramic view of Los Angeles. Leaning against these images are mid-size paintings, often stacked 12 deep. Forget what you’ve been told about not touching the art: Keene’s work is sturdy, and if you don’t flip through the stacks you’ll miss a lot.

Among the show’s most curious aspects are the series: 50 to 100 paintings of the same subject. No two works are exactly the same, as they would be if made by machine. Nor are they sufficiently different (in palette, composition or gesture) to let viewers exercise their personal taste. Choosing a piece within a series is an arbitrary exercise, a decision based not on significant distinguishing characteristics but on mere whim.

Smaller paintings are crammed onto the remaining three walls, creating an even greater visual clatter. Big bags of paintings, row upon row of stacked benches, and a plywood enclosure (where payments are made) transform the ordinarily spacious floor into a labyrinth of cramped aisles.

Over-the-top abundance gradually gives way to a sickening sense of repetition. Individual paintings do not hold up. In terms of palette, pastel-tinted primaries predominate, with fleshy peaches, off-whites and synthetic tans mellowing the clashing colors into a dull throb--not quite a migraine but a headache nonetheless.

Stylistically, Keene’s pictures combine the no-nonsense obviousness of sign painting with the loose brushwork of Expressionism. It’s not a propitious marriage. The unemotional control required to paint signs nullifies the spontaneity of Expressionistic gestures. Likewise, the freewheeling improvisations of the latter are straitjacketed by the dispassionate objectivity of the former, resulting in works that are formulaic and deadening.

In a sense, Keene’s paintings are props for the performance that unfolds at the rear of the warehouse-size gallery. Here, he has set up a temporary studio where he works every minute the museum is open (Tuesdays-Saturdays, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sundays, 12 a.m.-5 p.m.), churning out paintings at the pace of a sweatshop laborer.

Five giant easels, each of which holds 12 paintings, have been arranged in a circle. With a bucket of paint in one hand and a brush in the other, Keene walks around the ring, pausing before each panel to add the same element. Having gone full circle, he switches colors and repeats the procedure until all 60 paintings are finished. Setting up another group, he does it again. And again.

He works deliberately and efficiently. There’s an athleticism to his movements that recalls the dogged persistence of long-distance runners who keep plodding onward well after the main pack has crossed the finish line and the crowd has dispersed.

Keene is not so absorbed by his work that he has to ignore viewers in order to concentrate. He answers questions openly and unpretentiously. While a trace of bemused irony inflects his responses, an aw-shucks, this-is-just-what-I-do neutrality can be heard in his voice. All the while, he never stops working.

*

Keene is a Conceptual artist in that the ideas behind his works are more important than the objects themselves. But he is also a folk artist who is committed to delivering a product, however tacky. Making odd bedfellows of these incompatible movements, his art catches viewers in its cross hairs.

Although sex gets more attention in the United States, work is what defines us as people. With its fusing of creativity, assembly-line production and retail marketing, Keene’s installation links art and commerce in a manner that shatters common fantasies about painting being a labor of love.

“The Miracle Half Mile” is the naked presentation of a Sisyphean task from which the love has vanished long before the job is done. It lays bare the unglamorous reality of life as a hard-working artist--on average, a low-paying job that cannot be redeemed by the Protestant work ethic, no matter how devoutly it’s applied.

* “The Miracle Half Mile: Ten Thousand Paintings by Stephen Keene,” Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2525 Michigan Ave., Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, (310) 586-6488, through Jan. 27. Closed Mondays. Suggested donation: $3.