LA CIENEGA AREA

Robert Therrien has shaped up as such an interesting sculptor of strange, totemic or memory-laden objects that it’s disappointing to find his current show surveying more familiar pieces than introducing new ones. That feeling says more about our expectations of young artists than it does about their ability to feed a ravenous audience.

In a selection of paintings, drawings and sculptures from 1976 to 1985, Therrien develops a vocabulary of visually simple forms, lovingly crafted and loaded with associations. A tall, reddish wooden wall piece, roughly human in scale, suggests both doors and coffins. An angular yellow structure in a painting could be a church with an outsize spire. A bronze horn-like object and a wooden “bowl” projecting from a glossy white panel set off unaccountable evocations of everything from medieval ceremonies to accouterments in Brueghel’s paintings. The title “Snowman” presents the already obvious identity of a metal sculpture, but other pieces are purposely left open to interpretation.

Therrien is generous about such matters, but he is adamant about the space needed to surround his sculpture and about the relationships between them. As always, the installation of his art is so spare that it intensifies silent awareness of bold shapes and subtly finished surfaces. This arrangement works well when the pieces are as resonant as a massive bronze cone with its top ajar or a bronze cylinder pierced by a tapered rod. But when we face a peculiarly fussy white box with a row of little bells hanging from its lower edge, the setting only reinforces the sculpture’s emptiness.

This new piece falls quite flat, but we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Another recent work--an odd, yellow-green hat-like form that appears to have been tossed onto a rough white pedestal--returns us to Therrien’s provocatively mysterious territory. (Flow Ace Gallery, 8373 Melrose Ave., to March 2).