LA CIENEGA AREA

Roland Reiss must be part phoenix. For more than a decade he labored in honorable obscurity as an abstract artist, then emerged reborn in the ‘70s as a noted maker of mysterious miniature tableaux depicting provocatively barren classrooms and yuppie apartments.

That was already enough dramatic metamorphosis for one lifetime, but now--in his late 50s--he once again springs rejuvenated from his own ashes. (The tableaux were getting a trifle dull and desperate.)

New work bursts forth like some latter-day Samson tearing the temple of the philistines down around its ears. As a matter of fact, that is exactly what most of them are about. A copious exhibition of nearly 20 sculptures is devoted mainly to rough-hewn male figures in plaster either in white or shades of solid orange, blue or green as bright as a punker’s coiffure. Mind you, this is not your introspective miniaturist noodling away; this is Rolly the Body Builder working out nearly life-size.

A few figures are shown holding great loads of building materials--boards and I-beams and such--but most topple under weighty burdens or are pierced by falling beams. Even as they collapse their bodies are turning into architecture--legs become classical columns and torsos chunky Chicago-style banks.

Round about the gallery stand models of humorless high rises that give the figures immense scale. Clearly they have metaphorical intent like a travesty of some Beaux Arts allegory, “Architecture Elevates the Spirit of Mankind”--except here it destroys and oppresses. Could this be an artist’s angry response to the current consensus that architecture and design are presently far more vigorous and inventive than painting and sculpture? Or is it just another romantic jab at urban conformity and pedestrian practicality?

Whatever, it represents an extraordinary personal accomplishment for Reiss. The sense of excitement and renewed energy in the work is almost palpable. Even smaller tableaux in his familiar scale have the wacky lyricism of primitive Italian carving.

Unfortunately, the view from the promontory of art is not quite so cloudless. Although Reiss’ new figures ring a note of distinction, they are in fact a seamless pastiche of the works of several other artists--the neo-classical plasters of Manuel Neri, the falling bodies of Joel Shapiro and the general alienation of Giacometti. Reiss the tableaux maker was an offbeat original. Reiss the heroic sculptor is for the moment just another clever artist defected to the anonymous legions of the Neo-Expressionists. The new work appears vigorous and definitive. It is in fact a splendid gesture that makes us fold our arms and wait. (Flow Ace Gallery, 8373 Melrose Ave., to April 11.)