OUTSIDE ON THE roof of Lucky Tackle, Tim Sullivan has constructed a billboard displaying the postcard image of a California sunset. A palm tree rises as a silhouette in the picture's foreground, while the sea and sky shift behind it from an impossible baby blue to toxically intense shades of yellow and orange. Just to the right of the billboard's center, Sullivan has cut a hole, revealing the gray haze of the Oakland sky behind this idealized image. The installation raises questions about artifice and actuality, with specific regard to the meaning of "California." Inside the gallery, the cut-out piece of the billboard leans against the wall, like a remnant of the California dream, which the artist has been unable to relinquish despite the limits of reality he has confronted. Other work in the show similarly plays with banality and illusion. Fountain is a video installation built with two asymmetrically stacked television sets, decorated with pathetic, store-bought plants in plastic pots. In the top television, Sullivan stands with his shirt off and his arms spread like wings, apparently spitting a continuous stream of water across the picture plane. In the bottom TV, only his head appears in the lower corner of the frame, his mouth wide open, catching the stream of water as it splashes against his tongue. Sullivan's white-blond hair and pale skin give him the appearance almost of a cherub, and they make the living sculpture in his video look almost like marble. Nevertheless, the piece is ridiculous. Its illusions are transparent, cheap tricks. And the physicality of the spitting makes it reminiscent of some sex game. In Picnic Sullivan sits on a blanket in the grass with a faraway look and an apple in his hand. The bright red McIntosh gives the photograph the aura of a fairy tale. But Sullivan's daydreaming comes to nothing: In a second image, cut into the first like a thought bubble, he has taken a bite of the apple, choked, and died, facedown on the blanket. "Amazing Luminous Fountains" is the last complete show at Lucky Tackle before the gallery ends its three-year run of exhibiting experimental art. On Aug. 20, gallery director Adam Rompel will host a one-night group-show celebration, promisingly titled "For Tomorrow." Sat., 1-5 p.m., and by appt., 6608 San Pablo, Oakl. (510) 484-4373. (Clark Buckner)