Absurdities get batted about like pinatas

Gary BASEMAN is easy to spot in a crowd. Maybe it’s the gleam in his eye or the wide and slightly toothy grin, or maybe it’s the spring in his step as he walks, as if he’s in the habit of heading somewhere particularly exciting. Or maybe it’s the fez.

At his solo opening at La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Feliz recently, the 42-year-old artist was moving through the room, proudly sporting a red felt cap of the kind normally found on the heads of Turkish diplomats and aging, parading Shriners. Yet somehow, the fez looks right on Baseman. It provides the perfect fashion accent to his visual aesthetic as well as a playful counterpoint to the highbrow arts establishment.

On Baseman, a fez simultaneously signifies both childlike innocence and a streak of rebellious glee.

Born in Los Angeles and educated at UCLA, Baseman has evolved over the years from a skilled and insightful illustrator to a kind of graphic arts jack-of-all-trades. His work has appeared on the pages of the New Yorker, the New York Times, Rolling Stone and The Los Angeles Times. The work also is featured on promotional accounts for Nike, Kodak and the board game Cranium.

Baseman blesses the marriage of art and commerce, his disregard for art-world elitism recently culminating in the creation of his Emmy Award-winning cartoon series (and soon to be feature film), “Teacher’s Pet.”

“I like to say that the line between genius and stupidity has been smudged beyond recognition,” Baseman says with a smile.

For his show at La Luz, titled “I Am Your Pinata and Other Paintings About Love and Sacrifice,” Baseman has threaded his brightly illuminated, slightly askew world of ducks and bunnies and sad-eyed ice-cream cones with a brooding undercurrent of violence, the kind of graphic imagery one might not expect from a man whose day job is a network TV series.

In choosing pieces for the exhibition, Baseman set his imagination free, and the result is a giddy, candy-colored nightmare, a dream world touched with goofy, “Itchy and Scratchy”-style masochism. In most of the pieces, a pinata figures prominently, spilling pink guts and slick intestines instead of the usual lollipops and party favors.

“I liked the idea of the pinata,” Baseman says. “I liked this idea of it representing this celebration of human frailty and vulnerability. What I’m saying is, ‘Allow yourself to accept your own faults.’ I like the idea of having yourself in front of everybody and allowing them to take a whack, of opening up yourself, of taking chances and taking risks. And I wanted the images to be provocative.”

Yet despite the macabre pinatas, the dancing skeletons and the severed heads that float like gruesome balloons, there is something undeniably endearing about Baseman’s work, something cheery and good-natured, much like the man himself.There may be violence here but it is depicted with a Looney Tunes sense of the surreal. In the end Baseman’s paintings deliver the bitter medicine of human frailty with more than a few spoonfuls of sugar.

“There is so much absurdity, the absurdity of little kids hitting an animal with a stick to get candy, for instance,” Baseman says. “That’s what I love, taking things from society that are a little twisted and feeding them back with some humor and insight.”

At La Luz, the mood of opening night befits Baseman’s philosophy. Next to the cups of red wine and platter of cheese cubes sits an enormous white-frosted coconut cake and a bag of complimentary pinwheels. Outside, in a dark back alley, stylishly attired art patrons are bashing away at a large and swaying Baseman pinata. It is an 8-year-old’s birthday party gone horribly, wonderfully awry.

For the artist, smiling in the midst of the chaos, it feels exactly right. “This is great isn’t it?” he says contentedly, fez bobbing, “I mean, this is really fun.”

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Two of Baseman’s favorites

To eat: One of my favorite restaurants is Ciudad. I love the Brazilian Moqueca. They never make a bad mojito. Kate Mantilini for its ahi tuna medallion salad, Phillipe’s French dip, Moishe’s in the Farmers Market for its mouhamara (walnut and pepper dip) and Canter’s for my mom.

To find true inspiration: The flea market. The Rose Bowl and Fairfax High are where I find my prizes/muses: old Halloween photos, wood-jointed toys, kid’s old sketchbooks, mannequin heads and hands, Michelin men, old intriguing paintings.

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“I Am Your Pinata and Other Paintings About Love and Sacrifice”

When: October 4-27.

Where: La Luz de Jesus Gallery,

4633 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles.

Phone: (323) 666-7667.

Website: www.garybaseman.com,

www.laluzdejesus.com.