VENICE

A small step backward, a big step forward. Larry Bell, a veteran of Southern California’s “Light and Space Art,” has returned to his pristine glass cubes of nearly two decades ago but infused new versions with a constantly shifting array of mysterious color.

Depositing metallic particles on sheet glass in a vacuum chamber, he has turned out 10 cubes of various sizes that change in appearance with the viewer’s position. Walk this way and you see a wavy rainbow wrapping around a poof of green; go that way and you find subtly graduated stripes overlaid with reflections of other sculptures.

Bell said he conceived this work as “a portrait of the gallery space” but only as “a vehicle to get back into the (cube) format.” As the project turned out, connections between the architecture and the vacuum-deposited color are so subtle that they hardly matter. What does is the ethereal kinetic force within each sculpture. In the first room of the Market Street space are chrome-framed cubes with color applied only to the inside. That work led to unframed pieces coated on both inner and outer surfaces. The first group appears to contain colored smoke in a transparent volume; the second seems to disperse it. To his credit, Bell’s exacting technique isn’t what rushes out to meet you. Sensuous experience immediately takes over and hangs on in memory.

Concurrently, at the Venice Boulevard gallery, Bell’s vapor drawings on paper and glass feature haloed ellipses that shift and shimmer in iridescent splendor. His maquettes for sculpture consist of glass triangles and four-sided shapes, joined at right angles and set up in interchangeable arrangements. (L.A. Louver Gallery, 77 Market St. and 55 N. Venice Blvd., to Dec. 14.)