LA CIENEGA AREA

Reesey Shaw has turned her pale cloth constructions into solid blocks of encaustic-painted wood. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about these chunky abstract wall pieces is that they so clearly continue her sensibility in a material that might seem contrary to it. Where the fabric once curled at the edges, the wood evades right angles. Though her constructions are essentially built of only one or a few simple elements, they become complex in their deviations from stark geometry. The contours twist and slip away as if an organic force had shaped them. Their surfaces--bubbly and streaked in grayed blues, greens and neutrals--also suggest the textures and tones of nature.

There’s nothing new or fashionable in this work, which merges formal abstraction with a poetic attitude, but it exudes a quiet authority. As she treads a well worn path that snakes along between painting and sculpture, Shaw seems more concerned with assimilating into Modernist tradition than with distinguishing herself as an innovator. (Jeffrey Linden Gallery, 625 Almont Drive, to Nov. 29.)