The whimsy makes the posters, at 5 feet high and nearly just as wide, loom larger than life.

		'Extreme Canvas: Hand-Painted Movie Posters From Ghana' Where: The African American Cultural Center's 209/9th Street Gallery, 209 Ninth St., Downtown. When: Friday through April 1. Information: 412-281-5484.

There is the fanciful Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris. Men whose muscles have muscles and whose guns do, too.

Queen Latifah strikes a pose for "Set It Off." Is she sexy or menacing? Doesn't matter; you can't take your eyes off her.

But not all posters are full of humor.

Some are quietly reverential. There's a plaintive Donzel (sic) Washington as Malcolm X, of the Spike Lee film, a figure seemingly readying for prayer. The wording below promises "Great xpectations (sic)."

All are delightful: Images that come out of an African perspective of the prowess of American movie icons. They are movie posters, hand-painted by local Ghanaian artists onto raggedy canvas or stitched-together flour sacks.

In rural Ghana 20 years ago, Western and Asian films in videocassette format became the rage. In return, makeshift movie houses sprouted in rural villages, often in tents and with projectors run by generators. The growing medium brought a new kind of enterprise and advertising: hand-painted posters. All done without the use of printers, computers or graphic design software.

The work is part of "Extreme Canvas: Hand-Painted Movie Posters From Ghana," an exhibition of the African American Cultural Center. The show opens Friday and continues through April 1. The pieces will hang at the 209/9th Gallery, Downtown.

For years, African art -- mostly its sculpture -- swayed European art. But, these canvases tell a new story about the direction of African art and are, perhaps, one of the most visible influences of the new world shaping the old.

In recent decades, American signage has infiltrated the West Coast of Africa.

In cities and villages, it's not unusual to find colorful signs -- everywhere. The paintings -- a sort of graffiti-spiced folk art -- line the sides of wood buildings and small shops. They advertise barbershops, hair salons and food parlors.

In the mid-1980s, self-taught painters turned to movies, creating the peppy one-of-a-kind expressions exhibited. The exaggerations feature macabre images from horror films, barely clad women and hunks of martial arts heroes. There are 23 images in this show.

The posters were amassed by Ernie Wolfe III, a California-based collector of contemporary African art. Wolfe claims he paid the artists for their work but does not reveal how much.

The Ghanaian painters were largely self-taught, with a small class of first-generation artists mentoring a second. They became specialists. Sometimes they saw the film before painting; sometimes they just went with a description of the action and their imagination. Their enterprise lasted a decade. It faded as the video boom grew and mass-produced posters came into vogue.

Look closely, you'll recognize different styles.

The canvases are signed, unlike traditional African art.

The posters identify video club, city and location of the screenings. The more deteriorated a poster, possibly the more popular it was, as the poster had to move from city to city to "advertise" the film.

These canvases are a peek at what remains. Come take a look before they disappear.