HOLLYWOOD

Wade Saunders takes a new tack in an exhibition of nearly 20 small bronzes. When last seen in these parts, he was up to sculpture of stylized elephant heads or little teardrop men. They settled humorously into the mind without being at all farcical. New work still offers a laugh but it is the uneasy giggle of suspicion that this art has something up its sleeve.

Saunders employs a big dose of classic Surrealism but updated, simplifying the symbols that trigger the subconscious. “Nostalgia” is obvious enough. It depicts two oddly familiar but unspecified objects dangling on a coat hanger. It’s a hybrid of Giacometti and Jasper Johns that has a life of its own.

Other works are almost neo-atavistic, lumpy, symmetrical and free-standing. It’s no problem to pick out the phallic phunk implied in this piece or the fecal overtones of that pile of stuff. It’s pretty Jungian but not very pedantic. In some ways it’s going over ground already paced off by Bruce Nauman. The difference is that Nauman’s sensibility is rather consistently ominous while Saunders’ appears more objective, poking around trying to discover the most basic shapes that will productively derail the mind. He’s like a visual grammarian trying to invent the vowels. (Newspace Gallery, 5241 Melrose Ave., to Jan. 4.)