LA CIENEGA AREA

Robert Millar is a young local artist with a background in theater and design who fuses the formal elements of Minimalism with the environmental gestalt of the Light and Space school. Following the dictum that the perceptual field created by the combination of backlighting and gallery space is as important as the object within it, Millar imbues his metal and concrete totemic forms with an overall organic resonance that belies their starkly reductive material and structural properties.

While the results often owe all-too-obvious debts to such Light and Space stalwarts as Eric Orr, Doug Wheeler and Jim Turrell, a pair of smaller works--ironically titled “Precious” and “Precious Too”--is much more interesting. In each case, two shelflike aluminum forms (they resemble inverted “L” shapes turned on their sides) are lit from above at different angles. The vertical and diagonal reflections and drop shadows metamorphose the otherwise identical forms into complex “auras” of light and dark, where soft and hard edges, overlapping angles and ambiguous spatial parameters create a provocative interplay of perceptual deceits. If Millar can consistently move beyond the simple dialectic of “hard” form in “soft” space, he may have a future in a field where originality is currently at a premium. (Jeffrey Linden Gallery, 625 N. Almont Drive, to March 14.)