Is it truth in advertising?

You can see the work of two young artists at UCLA’s Hammer Museum without paying a penny. German artist Markus Linnenbrink has painted bright, drippy stripes on the lobby walls around the massive main stairway, and a 33-minute film by Chicago-based Deborah Stratman plays continuously in a small, darkened gallery across from the ticket counter.

The spirit in which these works are publicly presented is generous. From the street, Linnenbrink’s hand-painted lines look less like sloppy wallpaper than a huge room festooned with an overabundance of party streamers. “Come in for some festive fun,” his sprawling wall painting practically screams, “everyone’s welcome.”

And once inside the lifeless corporate office building that houses the museum, Stratman’s film is no less accessible. Images of gas stations, convenience stores and ATMs flicker by, depicting a world as commonplace as the suburbs and as ubiquitous as television.

Because you haven’t paid an admission fee, it’s hard to explain why these works leave you feeling shortchanged. Not ripped-off or swindled. Just vaguely dissatisfied. You walk out the door harassed by the suspicion that you got less than you bargained for.

That’s a strange feeling, especially in a society of consumers who are used to paying for their pleasures. The predominant attitude toward art is, “Nothing paid, nothing lost, so what’s the big fuss?”

But art is not like other forms of entertainment. You can get a bum deal without spending any money because works of art not only propose how life might be different if the world were a better place, they let us live there momentarily, while we’re under their spell.

Complacency plays too big a role in each artist’s work for either to get beyond the obvious. Rather than providing evidence of uncompromising visions, they combine a little of this and a little of that to make collage-like pieces that don’t add up to much.

Trying to please most of the people most of the time is a recipe for blandness. As a filmmaker, Stratman is a dabbler. “In Order Not to Be Here” begins with a series of grainy, glare-filled shots of what appears to be a police canine unit arresting a suspect in a park. Filmed at night, through a lens that makes the scene look as if it’s a super-realistic video game, the jittery images take the hand-held look of documentary realism to the next level.

We see the fragmented drama unfold below us, from the circling perspective of a police helicopter. Garbled radio transmissions add to the effect, making the opening of Stratman’s film look like an artsy version of a reality-based cop program. Narrative meaning is swamped by a type of stylishness that’s already 10 years old.

For the next section, Stratman set her camera on a tripod and filmed various brick walls, wooden fences and freeway embankments. Empty parking lots follow, along with shot after shot of the driveways of drive-through pharmacies, the exteriors of fast-food restaurants and the facades of ATMs. All were shot at night.

If Stratman had been using a still camera, her work would resemble Lewis Baltz’s photographs of modern suburbia. Imagine what it would be like to be a surveillance camera that keeps running long after the last customers left and you’ll have an idea of what Stratman’s film looks like and how tedious it is.

It concludes with an over-produced chase scene. Made to mimic satellite-transmitted military imagery, this staged section (again shot from a helicopter), follows a man who climbs fences, sprints through traffic, continues along railroad tracks and eventually jumps into a river and disappears beneath some trees. If you are nostalgic for the live car chases L.A. TV stations used to televise (until they were prohibited), you might like this part of Stratman’s film. But a lot is lost in the shift from live to performed.

“In Order Not to Be Here” has the presence of a mockumentary directed by someone without a clear idea of the story she is trying to tell. As a viewer, you begin to think that the title is art-speak for “just leave.”

In contrast, Linnenbrink’s wall painting, “Myself Outside,” is a jazzy, eye-catching extravaganza that dresses up the sterile lobby. Drawing visitors up the stairs, it’s an effective advertisement for the art in the galleries on the second and third floors, for which you must buy a ticket.

But art is also an advertisement for itself, and this is where Linnenbrink’s perfectly pleasant wall painting falls short. It’s too indecisive -- and too calculating -- to stake out enough space for itself in the present. In other words, it’s as forgettable as any summer diversion that’s neither mentally taxing nor emotionally demanding.

Linnenbrink’s work consists of about 90 horizontal stripes that completely cover the walls. Unlike house painters, who paint from top to bottom to cover their drips, Linnenbrink goes out of his way to generate drips. He mixes his acrylics thin. He soaks his rollers until they’re saturated with paint. Then he paints with lots of pressure, beginning at the floor and working his way to the ceiling. Drips proliferate, bleeding and blending into the colors below. Sometimes Linnenbrink doubles back to add a band atop his drips. The horizontal stripes and vertical drips crisscross, creating a pattern that recalls woven fabric. The absent canvas is called to mind.

Unfortunately, Linnenbrink’s imprecise lines and formulaic drips combine rigor and unpredictability in an unsatisfying manner. His pretty pattern made up of lovely translucent colors is wishy-washy because it embodies neither the power of a thought followed to its logical conclusion nor the freewheeling spontaneity of messes made for their own sake.

The magic -- of eating your cake and having it too -- never gets off the ground in his flat-footed conflations of randomness and repetition. Instead, Linnenbrink’s bland abstractions seem to be hedging their bets, covering every move they make in one direction (tidy lines) with a countermove in the opposite (disorderly drips).

Art isn’t exciting when its makers and sponsors behave like middle-of-the-road brokers, gamblers whose only goal is to minimize their losses. When art becomes business as usual, viewers are the real losers.

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Markus Linnenbrink and Deborah Stratman

Where: UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood

When: Summer hours: Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, noon-7 p.m.; Wednesdays-Fridays, noon-9 p.m.

Ends: Jan. 4

Price: Free to these shows only

Contact: (310) 443-7000