LA CIENEGA AREA

Pairing separate shows of works by Chris Burden and Mike Kelley brings together two of the art world’s favorite bad boys whose reputations are based on both performance and more traditional art forms.

Burden has created an impressive body of work over the last decade or so, but he is still remembered for having himself shot early in his career. In his display of “The Sex Tower” and other recent proposals, Burden is in fine form, dreaming up monumental structures that talk about power. Most of these concepts--some realized, some not--involve enormous physical effort to build objects that either grind into action or gather energy in a central form.

“The Sex Tower,” represented by a 12-foot-tall wood model for a work 10 times that size, portrays sex as a gilded prize, with a gold-leafed ring around the peak of an open-pyramid tower. Drawings of other proposals include a “Tower of Power” built of 100 gold bricks (worth $100 million) and a “Spinning Dervish” that sends six squares of sheet metal attached to ship chain flying around a central hoop. Like his memorable “Big Wheel” and the enormous hole that currently exposes the foundation of the Temporary Contemporary, these ideas capture attention by sheer scale and force. But the concepts don’t fade with the next attraction, proving that Burden is saying something important about our preoccupation with being in command.

Kelley’s reputation is shaded by the scatalogical, erotic edge of his art. That aspect is here, but something more important is going on in the 15 drawings and paintings assembled in “Vintage Works, 1979-84.” As an ironic conceptualist, he dips into everything from ignorance to poltergeists. Though he exploits an adolescent persona in a piece called “Junior High Notebook Cover,” Kelley gets a keen fix on the adult world elsewhere, usually overlaying images (and meanings) with text and combining several separately framed works.

Thus, an oil pump dubbed the “National Bird” appears above the Eagle Rock garbage dump and a similarly shaped mass that looks like a human brain. “Ingestion” juxtaposes three images: a frog immersed in liquid, Goya’s painting of “Saturn Devouring Its Young” and the planet Saturn encircled by its rings. One of the most self-evident works pairs a likeness of a “Cliff Notes” cover (familiar to all college students on the fast track to learning) with that of a padlocked book and the words “If you don’t want to know the definition, don’t open the dictionary.” Kelley’s work isn’t much to look at, but it’s packed with ideas. When he’s on, he’s very sharp indeed. (Rosamund Felsen Gallery, 669 N. La Cienega Blvd., to April 18.)