ART REVIEWS : Some Disappointing Pop Pranks

German artist Martin Kippenberger is the art world’s latest enfant terrible. A protean figure who dabbles in nearly every medium, Kippenberger draws, paints, makes sculpture, photographs, collages and books, and does installation and performance pieces. The unifying element in this freewheeling body of work is that most of what Kippenberger does is a conceptual goof.

A social critic who transforms the trash of a corrupted culture into ironic commentary on the personality crisis of the human race, Kippenberger isn’t venturing on any new turf in pointing out our collective failures as a society; beneath its veneer of flashy provocation, his work isn’t terribly original and is often poorly thought out. Rather, like Jeff Koons, Kippenberger seems to be more about getting a buzz going in the art world based on the sheer force of his personality--and he’s doing a good job of that.

Tales of Kippenberger’s outrageous pranks circulate in the art world like insider fairy tales. He may not have created a great body of work yet, but he’s sure got a persona.

In light of the glowing advance word on Kippenberger, the work he’s exhibiting at the Luhring Augustine Hetzler Gallery in Santa Monica is disappointing. For this show he made a series of paintings, photographed them, then cut them up and used them as raw materials for sculptures.

On view are 15 color photos of the paintings enlarged to the exact size of the paintings. The paintings/photos are composed of multiple layers of imagery drawn from the world of advertising and mass media. We see product logos, sales slogans, dirty words and buzzwords, U.S. presidents, electric guitars, bottles of booze, cowboy boots, cops, sexy chicks and clenched fists. Employing the splashy colors and bold graphics of poster art, the images come on with a brash, eye-catching swagger.

Ostensibly a subversion of conventional ideas concerning good and bad taste and an expose of the falsity and manipulation of most social interaction, the work is basically an attack on the bourgeoisie. Unfortunately, it’s virtually impossible for an artist to launch a credible attack on the bourgeoisie these days because considering the thousands of people living in city streets--and the rivers of money that recently coursed through the art market--who in the art world isn’t part of the bourgeoisie?

Stylistically, Kippenberger owes a debt to Sigmar Polke, the Arte Povera movement, pop, graffiti and German Expressionism. His more important links are with punk rock and Appropriationism, in that Kippenberger is more a strategist than a maker of things. His art is essentially a footnote in the story of his life--and to get the jokes and revelations in this story, you need to have followed it from the beginning.

* Luhring Augustine Hetzler: 1330 4th St., Santa Monica , to July 13; (213) 394-3964. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

On the Border: Growing up in Ohio, artist Michael Tracy was so profoundly struck by the ritual, mystery and eros of the Catholic Church that he signed on for a long stint as an altar boy. As can be seen in an exhibition of Tracy’s work at the Daniel Weinberg Gallery in Santa Monica, those years in the church continue to be central to his consciousness. Invoking the visuals, the ceremony and the emotional vocabulary of Catholicism, Tracy explores themes of martyrdom, sacrifice and absolution. There’s a vaunting spiritual ambitiousness at the heart of this work that occasionally gets a bit grandiose, but mostly Tracy’s work is quite moving.

Tracy’s spirituality took an interesting twist 13 years ago when he moved to San Ygnacio, Tex., a small border town on the Rio Grande. There he found himself outraged by the poisoning of the river and the American cultural imperialism he saw destroying Mexico’s native culture. At this point he began creating devotional works for the dying river, while other pieces explored the cruelty of border towns. He made large burning altars that he cast adrift on the Rio Grande, and began incorporating milagros, bull horns, the mound-like shape of Aztec temples and the hair of Mexican women in his work.

On view is work from Tracy’s recent “Cicatrix” series; cicatrix is the tissue that remains at the site of a healed wound, and this work is about healing the wounds of the Rio Grande and the U.S.-Mexico border. The series centers on massive canvases painted in gold paint so thick that their surfaces erupt into fissures and cracks. Also on view are smaller works depicting gold crucifixes rendered in metallic foil that is scraped, scarred and peeling away. The strongest works on view are “Scapular I and II,” a pair of low relief sculptures mounted on magenta silk and presented in ornate gilt frames. A scapular is a garment worn by Roman Catholics as a token of religious devotion; Tracy’s “Scapulars” are roiling organic forms fashioned out of glass, rope, gold paint and human hair.

* Daniel Weinberg Gallery: 2032 Broadway, Santa Monica , to July 13; (213) 453-0180. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Naked City: Photographer Arthur Fellig had such a knack for sniffing out where disaster was about to strike that his pals in New York in the ‘30s dubbed him Weegee after the fortunetelling Ouija board. The child of Jewish refugees, Weegee began his career as a street photographer on New York’s Lower East Side, then stumbled into the perfect beat for his sensibility in 1935 when he started free-lancing out of Manhattan police headquarters. It was this gig that led to the widely loved body of work that is the cornerstone of his reputation. Originally appearing in his critically acclaimed book of the mid-’40s, “Naked City,” this work is on view in an abbreviated form at the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery in Santa Monica.

Photographing all manner of urban chaos, from burning buildings and auto accidents to Gotham’s underworld of pimps, gangsters, murder victims and strippers, Weegee is the Philip Marlowe of photography. Rooted in the detached voyeurism intrinsic to photojournalism (and detective work), Weegee’s images are infused with a profound empathy and wit that allows them to transcend the newspaper snapshot genre and touch us as art. At turns ruthlessly macabre and wrenchingly tender, the work stands as a timeless and darkly comic essay on the violence and tragedy of urban life.

The show is fleshed out with a selection of Weegee’s work of the ‘60s, which experimented with surrealistic distortions. You’ll probably find yourself brushing quickly past this stuff in order to get back to those amazing pictures of New York. Also on view are photographs by Sid Avery who was recently reviewed by The Times.

* G. Ray Hawkins Gallery: 910 Colorado Blvd., Santa Monica , to July 6; (213) 394-5558. Closed Sundays and Mondays.