La Cienega Area

Erika Rothenberg’s paintings and installations in “America: The Perfect County” serve up cheerily mordant satires of the sanitized outlook and blinkered thinking that characterize the super-patriot as well as the bumbling liberal. Coloring-book figures painted in bright, flat colors and blithely uncredited statistics about trends in national behavior give the works an ingenuous, pseudo-Populist air.

In “There Is No Better Country on Earth,” a blond family blandly presides over images of low points in American history and politics--among them, Ku Klux Klansmen, the famous image of a burned child fleeing the My Lai massacre and a 19th-Century print of a Native American massacre. A gold eagle adorns the text, which announces that “Today, thanks to hard work, God and strong family values, we’ve become a nation of freedom, peace and equality.”

“Sex Piece,” illustrates a trio of statistics about sexual activity with ordinary objects displayed on stanchions. A pile of colored billfolds accompanying the statement “74% of American women like money more than sex” teases with a sexual double-entendre. A statement about the percentage of teen-agers who expect sex if they pay for dinner comes with a pair of Big Mac wrappers, suggesting the ludicrous and shabby nature of this quid pro quo.

“Which Country Is the Best Country?” is a participatory game of miniature golf rigged so that the player is obliged to send the ball down the path to the “correct” answer. Energetically didactic, offering the appearance of pleasure and good sportsmanship, the game is a sendup of the insidious media message as well as the powers that control it. (Rosamund Felsen Gallery, 669 N. La Cienega Blvd., to Dec. 23.)