Casting a cold eye ...

Tackling taboo subjects is often the grist of creativity; many artists love to dig into territory others prefer to leave untouched. For the conceptual artist Erika Rothenberg, a favorite topic is death.

“I’m interested in death and killing,” she said with a sly grin during a recent conversation at her Culver City studio. “I always read the obituaries first when I open the newspaper.”

It’s a surprising comment coming from someone so strikingly sunny, with her long red hair, bright smile and ready laugh. Rothenberg hardly seems absorbed in gothic gloom. Yet she says she likes to explore what makes people tick, and her frank look at the subject of death and its aftermath is just one part of that quest.

Two years ago, on a trip to Venice, Italy, Rothenberg visited a cemetery on the Island of San Michele. There she took two photographs, one showing the gravesite of the 20th century composer Igor Stravinsky, the other that of his wife, Vera. Both are part of a solo exhibition of the artist’s work, which continues through April 16 at Rosamund Felsen Gallery in Santa Monica.

In the photos, the identical rectangular stone grave markers lie side by side, each inscribed with just the occupant’s name. But Igor’s is strewn with gifts -- bouquets of fresh flowers, a drawing, a wreath and many pebbles -- all left as homage to the genius master. Vera’s, by contrast, lies starkly unadorned, a bunch of dead flowers at its foot.

“I think there’s something to think about there,” Rothenberg says, without apparent anger or guile. “These two photographs bring up many questions. What was their relationship like? And it exists after death! He’s been dead since 1971, and they still have a relationship.” You can imagine Vera perpetually playing a wifely supporting role, Rothenberg suggests, forgotten but essential to her husband’s success. You can wonder whether she was always overlooked, perhaps without expectation that it could be otherwise. You can feel for her, or not.

Rothenberg’s work asks her audience to respond to dramas, but she does not openly state her point of view. Sometimes she tells stories; sometimes she quotes others’. At times she is inspired by something she’s seen or read in the newspaper. Usually there’s a touch of satire or ironic humor in the work.

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Pondering big issues

In “Monument to a Bear,” a concrete tombstone memorializes a real-life bear rescued from a forest fire. The animal, bandaged where it had been badly burned, healed in a Montana wildlife shelter before being returned to the wild; during its recuperation it was a favorite of shelter visitors. Soon after the bear’s release, however, it was legally shot by a hunter. Rothenberg’s sculpture includes a re-creation of the head and the bandaged paws of the beleaguered beast as well as a bronze plaque presenting an Associated Press news story covering the bear’s demise.

This and other recent and early works are part of the show at the Felsen Gallery as is an expanded version of a participatory piece that caused a stir last year when it was first shown in “100 Artists See Satan” at Cal State Fullerton’s Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana. On a table in the gallery, Rothenberg set out a book whose cover art posed the question: “If everyone was allowed one free kill a year

“I actually thought people wouldn’t want to write in it, because it seems like bad karma,” Rothenberg says. “But nope. It was just unbelievable.” Some visitors even wrote the artist’s name, and she admits she set herself up as fair game.

“Erika says things that need to be said and are seldom said as clearly or strongly,” says scientist Stuart Spence, who with his wife, Judy Spence, has collected works by Rothenberg and made donations of them to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Laguna Art Museum. People sometimes see her work as simplistic or political, but Spence sees it as an examination of important social issues.

“Killing is a basic thing that we do,” Rothenberg says. “It’s a really important part of human life. We may be struggling to get beyond it, but basically people have been doing it since the beginning of time.”

Her best-known piece in Los Angeles is in the main plaza of the Hollywood & Highland shopping and entertainment complex, next to where the Academy Awards are presented each year. Just east of the entrance to the Kodak Theatre, which is covered with a real red carpet, Rothenberg adorned the entrance stairway and floors of a second public courtyard with her own version of a winding “red carpet,” this one concrete and including dozens of anonymous biographical statements describing the dreams of Hollywood wannabes. Some of them came to act and ended up as technicians. Others got closer to their wish. With this piece, permanently installed since 2001 at the center of the myth and reality of Hollywood, Rothenberg lets us all walk all over the American Dream.

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Commercial success

Rothenberg’s own migration to Hollywood, where she lives, was not part of her dream. Born and raised in Manhattan, she studied art at the University of Chicago, then returned home to New York, the city she thought she’d never leave again. Looking for work, she landed in an advertising agency and, noting that the best jobs were for art directors, she took a class at the School of Visual Arts in New York that promised her a graphic design portfolio by the end of a semester’s work. Indeed, after the class she landed a job; for the next seven or eight years, she says, she worked as an art director at the McCann Erickson advertising agency, dreaming up print and television ads. Her clients included Coca-Cola and the New York Times, and she says she made plenty of money but worked around the clock with no time to make her own art.

Finally, after saving for a year, she abandoned the high-paying job and began to live her dream as an artist -- on little money. During the next few years her work began to be recognized, and she met her future husband, Albert Litewka. He wanted to move to L.A., and she agreed to join him. They came in 1986, a time when L.A.’s art gallery scene was far more minimal than New York’s.

“When I went to parties, people would say, ‘Why did you move here?’ ” she remembers. “No one would ever say that now. But there were fantastic artists here, and it was an incredible community. So even though I desperately missed New York, I liked L.A.” Litewka developed a business in entertainment marketing; they have a daughter in high school, and Rothenberg is fully integrated into the L.A. scene.

Her work has been exhibited internationally, with equal-opportunity provocation. Thanks to her advertising background, which taught her to integrate language and visual statements, her art is both accessible and memorable.

“The fine balance she achieves between lightness and seriousness is what really distinguishes her work,” says Carol Eliel, curator of modern and contemporary art at LACMA. “She’s at her very best when she combines her really strong graphic visual sense with her intelligence and wit.”

“What I love about art,” Rothenberg says, “is that it can give you space to have a variety of responses. My work gives you space. But you step into that space and everything changes.”

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Erika Rothenberg

Where: Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica

When: 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Tuesdays through Saturdays

Ends: April 16

Contact: (310) 828-8488; www.rosamundfelsen.com