ART REVIEWS : ‘Hotel Zombie’: Walls Offer Guessing Game : Gronk uses a dominating black-and-white brushed surface on which he paints images and scenes that become visible when given a closer look.

Gronk, a Los Angeles artist who goes by one name, has emblazoned the South Coast Plaza satellite location of the Laguna Art Museum with the kind of art that appeals to people who don’t really like art but enjoy guessing games.

All the gallery walls are covered with a vibrant black-and-white flicker of broadly brushed paint. If you look hard enough, heads, fists and crosses seem to emerge from the all-over patterning.

On top of this seething surface Gronk has painted an array of mildly mysterious images and scenes: bound, mummy-like figures, one of which is on fire; a trio of ghostly white figures apparently doing push-ups; a running figure; silhouetted figures standing near a ladder; an arm that ends in a boxing glove; stylized red flowers; a keyhole through which a glimpse of a nude can be seen; a huge mottled blob with long tentacles; super-size cocktail glasses filled with colorful drinks or ice cubes.

Mask-like, colorful faces with car-grill teeth adorn the backs of two chairs. A third chair sports a shrine-like heart emblem.

The name of the piece is “Hotel Zombie,” and it supposedly has something to do with the old-time mystique of hotels. According to remarks the artist has made in recent interviews, the piece further seeks to make a statement about life. Just what that statement might be is broadly open to interpretation, in the manner of much youthfully energetic, eagerly Angst- ridden expressionistic art.

Overall, the work offers a panorama of nocturnal mischief, with crime (the silhouetted figures might be burglars), violence, a speedy getaway, alcohol consumption, voyeurism (the keyhole), and maybe some form of blind obedience to the dictates of an impersonal higher power (the zealous push-up trio, bowing toward a mecca of the physically fit). The painted chairs, positioned ceremonially, directly in front of each other, might represent some form of religious rite.

Gronk became known for his work as part of the East Los Angeles art group Asco, and his art tends to reflect a “downtown populist” spirit. Reveling in the speedy, free-flowing application of paint, he aims to create broadly accessible cultural myths by incorporating symbols--newly minted or traditional--with scenes of street-wise, non-elitist human experience.

By creating a massive, wraparound environment, Gronk gives his imagery a big boost: When you’re inside this sprawling indoor-outdoor hotel, each image loudly calls attention to itself. But the mythical aspect of the work seems shallow and undeveloped. By recycling second-hand imagery so naively, Gronk makes a piece that is no more than the sum of its parts. It revels happily in cliches of big bad urban life without revealing an incisive point of view.

The museum will issue a brochure on the installation in a few weeks, but for now all viewers have to go on is a cloying and unclear text posted in the gallery. It says that “Hotel Zombie” is part of a “critically acclaimed” series (what critics have acclaimed it, and what did they like about it?) “with references to both mindless worker/ghosts of myth (huh? who are they?) and the popular singles-bar cocktail.” (Do they serve different kinds of drinks in singles’ bars, or what?) So much for enlightenment.

“Hotel Zombie,” a painted installation by Gronk, remains through Dec. 31 at the Laguna Art Museum’s South Coast Plaza satellite, 3333 Bristol St. Suite 1000 (near the Carousel Court) in Costa Mesa. Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays. Admission: free. Information: (714) 662-3366.

When is an art gallery not an art gallery? When it’s a cafeteria in a medical center.

A press release flew over the Fax lines last week to trumpet the opening of “The IMC Gallery, (Irvine’s) newest showcase for local artists” with “Overtures,” a show of work in several media by 14 California artists, which continues through December. A quote from gallery co-director Marlan Globerson gushed that the exhibit “will function as an overture, awakening the expectations of the audience and setting a mood of anticipation.”

Yeah, right. I sure felt a tingle in my heart as I walked down the stairs of the Irvine Medical Center and prepared to lean ever-so-politely over the meal trays of hospital staff and visitors while I peered at the art on the walls.

Some of the pieces are hung along two stubby corridors that lead off the dining room. But the overriding impression is of a utilitarian area that do-gooders have tried to gussy up with the soothing aura of culture. The result is a compromise between function and frill. The room exists to accommodate people who are eating. The corridors exist to move people from one point of the hospital to another. And the art serves as an oh-so-tasteful garnish. So what’s wrong with that? Well, in a real gallery, it is the main course.

The artists represent a potpourri of well-known names, Orange County hopefuls and others. Sequestered behind cafeteria tables and grouped according to the low-key designs or pleasant colors they project, all the art is reduced to the level of designer wallpaper--even works with a meditative or complex theme (like composer John Cage’s randomly fire-exposed print “Where There Is Where There” and Jack Ox’s visual translation of the movements from Anton Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony).

As it turns out, a cafeteria is a better showcase for more vacuous and gimmicky pieces that don’t require more than a quick glance, such as David Quick’s “Nude Descending the Cash Drawer.” The piece springs into action at the touch of a button, sending a metal silhouette of a pert female nude (the kind you see on truckers’ wheel flaps) plummeting upside down on a series of gears mounted on a cash register drawer. The reference is to Marcel Duchamp’s much-travestied painting “Nude Descending a Staircase,” but if there is a point here about high-priced contemporary art, it is delivered with the wit and freshness of a banana peel pratfall.

Globerson and her partner, Brenda Solomon, do provide a handout guide to the themes of the works on view. But even good intentions can’t salvage Restaurant Art. It is forever doomed to play second fiddle--even when it stirs the customers to outspoken anger, as Lilli Muller’s graphic

plaster nudes did last week at Z Pizza, also in Irvine.

People come to restaurants and cafeterias to eat, drink and socialize, not to ponder, worry, feel repelled or be piously uplifted to the holy realm of culture. The only kind of “art” that fits the bill is the kind that speaks very softly or carries a big shtick.

“Overtures” continues through December at the IMC Gallery, Irvine Medical Center, 16200 Sand Canyon Ave. in Irvine. The “gallery” is always open. Admission is free. Information: 1 (800) 262-6210.