Mr. Conal, who lives in Los Angeles, paints bitingly satiric portraits of profiteers and power brokers, adds a punning tag line, runs them off in poster form and, with the aid of volunteers, papers major cities. Recently, Mr. Conal rented a billboard in West Hollywood and adorned it with an image of Senator Jesse Helms looking somewhat disgruntled - understandable in light of the fact that his head was impaled on an artist's palette. With the world as his open-air gallery, he deconstructs popular culture for all to see, unscrambling the media signals with which society is constantly bombarded. Jerry Johnson has been painting ironic murals on a building at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Nevins Street in the Boerum Bill section of Brooklyn since 1982. Completed during Ronald Reagan's first term in office, it juggled ideas about dressing for success and right-wing politics.
Billboards are honest.
The artist gets rich and the patron sits on the painting until it appreciates, then dumps it. Coping With Information Anxiety Ludicrousness, seasoned with savage wit and subversive thought in equal parts, is the tactic used by the Dallas-based Church of the SubGenius to lampoon religious cults, motivational sales programs and other forms of groupthink. Relax in the safety of your own delusions. Clearly, the Church of the SubGenius has struck a chord. According to Mr. Stang, known to the faithful as Sacred Scribe No. 27s, the surreal cult is most popular among information addicts involved in desktop publishing and pirate radio.