Art Review: Coleen Sterritt’s ‘Torque’ rebels in subtle ways

The best works in “Torque,” Coleen Sterritt’s smart solo show at Another Year in LA look like pieces of furniture that, in striving to be all they can be, have turned themselves inside out.

In a previous life, “Rond de Jambe” may have been a nice coffee table. In Sterritt’s hands, the funky sculpture is a riot of rings, disks and balls of tangled fishing line, its scrappy forms held aloft by four lumpy feet whose wonderful clumsiness recalls the cartoon-inspired figures Philip Guston painted.

“Footy” puts you in mind of a navel-gazing coat rack, its otherwise useful knobs and rods turned into an asymmetrical pretzel of an abstraction whose family lineage may be traced back to something Henry Moore might have made — and then thought better of.

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“Vixen” is a lawn chair gone wrong, its mobility and adjustability compromised by the weight of its wood, its clunky composition and the drips of black paint Sterritt has liberally applied, turning it into a 3-D painting Rauschenberg would have discarded for being too neat or a space-saving installation that would turn Victor Vasarely’s stomach.

Two architecturally oriented sculptures and six psychologically charged collages round out Sterritt’s subtly rebellious exhibition, which appreciates the absurdity of human intentions yet never makes fun of the desire to customize everything we come across, whether it’s the stuff we find in dumpsters or the interpretations of modern art we read in textbooks.

Another year in LA, 8687 Melrose Ave., Pacific Design Center, Suite B267, through Jan. 3. Closed Saturdays though Mondays. www.anotheryearinla.com.