West Los Angeles

Two dozen carnival masks from the tiny West African country of Guinea Bissau are temporary residents in Ernie Wolfe’s unconventional outpost of ethnic art. The gallery has housed a fantastic jungle of painted metal plants--not to mention shows of Polish and Soviet art--but it has never topped the current assembly of masks. Measuring up to 5 feet tall and displayed on posts so that they loom above our heads, the masks are a wondrous and terrifying forest of weird faces that threaten to eat visitors alive. Painter Ed Moses has provided a suitably ominous background of dripped pigment on dark canvas.

Wolfe, who travels widely and has a penchant for ethnic art that you won’t find in coffeetable books, bought all the masks from young men who wore them in a pre-Lenten parade last spring. Made of papier-mache over clay molds, the brightly painted masks are typically destroyed or discarded after the annual parades. This show is likely the first American exhibition of carnival masks from Guinea Bissau.

Are they great art? Not in terms of refinement, but the masks are extraordinarily expressive. While each is an individual creation, the faces share ghoulish grins, sharp fangs, curled horns and big, pointed ears. Little people and animals often sprout on the tops of the giant heads. Human hands sometimes emerge from the masks’ hungry mouths.

Two themes apparently dominated the 1989 parade: health and world peace. A bright-blue condom is displayed on one mask, while another boasts a little doctor with his medical kit. The piece de resistance, however, is a mean, toothy face that sprouts a veritable tower of peace. A nude male figure standing on the mask balances the star of Guinea Bissau and a white dove on his head while he waves Soviet and U.S. flags. (Ernie Wolfe Gallery, 1653 Sawtelle Blvd., to Jan. 31.)