POINT BLANK SPREADING HONEY, SPEWING VINEGAR.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

It might not be such a good thing when a performance artist's behavior turns out to be so much more arresting than what she's actually trying to say. In other words, if you're going to strip naked in front of an audience and writhe provocatively on a mat drenched with honey, you might want to figure out what the ... er ... gesture is trying to communicate. Either give it a context or else leave us with an image and throw a fast blackout before you squinch, squinch, squinch your way off to the showers.

Karen Finley does neither. But she uses the moment to toss out the best line of her newest piece, ``Shut up and Love Me.'' ``By the way,'' she says, covered head to toe in the sticky goo, her already matted reddish hair starting to stick to her shoulders, ``this wasn't federally funded.'' It's a line of ironic self-awareness, but also a reminder that Finley has visited this territory before. We are watching the woman who - with fellow avant-garde artists John Fleck, Tim Miller and Holly Hughes - sued over the right to expose indecently after their grants from the National Endowment for the Arts were revoked. This was 10 years ago. Now Finley is back, a high-profile court victory to her credit, still stirring the pot and using her body both as canvas and mouthpiece. Yesterday it was chocolate syrup and yams. Today it's honey.

But to what purpose? In between Finley's bumping, grinding, self- pleasuring and tongue-flicking, ``Shut Up and Love Me'' is a series of rambling monologues about daughters demanding sex from their fathers, and mothers lusting after their sons. Then there's the woman who turns a lonely Thanksgiving into a sexual odyssey with cripples, neighbors and, for all we know, crippled neighbors. Unquestionably, there is rage fueling Finley's dialogue, but it's not always so easy to figure out her targets.

Finley reads from notebook paper, occasionally improvising or pausing to repeat a line when it gets a laugh. Her stage is a settee, a table turned on end to function as a lectern, and, of course, the honey mat. ``Shut Up,'' which heads to New York after its four-week engagement at the Coast Playhouse, feels deliberately free-form and spontaneous. Before a Sunday performance, Finley took a few minutes to explain why she had to cross through the house and use the bathroom before beginning her performance. Scripted or not, it got a laugh. Finley is nothing if not entertaining.

Not that this woman ever met a fourth wall she couldn't beat into oblivion. Her show begins with an extremely raunchy, thong-displaying dance to Barry White's ``Can't Get Enough of Your Love Babe'' in which Finley cavorts through the audience, plunking herself in some people's laps and molding her breasts onto the heads of others. An eye-opening start, certainly, but as an artist, where do you go from there?

Nowhere new, it turns out. It's pretty much a given that audiences will remember Finley's food antics. Whether her voice or statements will register is another matter.

The facts

--What: ``Shut Up and Love Me.''

--Where: Coast Playhouse, 8325 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood.

--When: 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday; through May 21.

--Tickets: $15 to $25. Call [phone].

--Our rating: Two and one half stars.

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Photo: Karen Finley's performance art piece, ``Shut Up and Love Me,'' runs through May 21 at the Coast Playhouse.