The works of three young sculptors now...

The works of three young sculptors now appear in the lobby of the East County Performing Arts Center in El Cajon (210 E. Main St.).

Jerry Dumlao makes polychrome steel sculptures by stacking interlocking ellipses with occasional rectilinear forms for support. In “Remembered Tracings,” the ellipses seem to float in and through a frame. It is to Dumlao’s credit as a sculptor that his works are not reducible to two dimensions. They must be experienced firsthand to be appreciated.

Peter Mitten uses painted cement in abstract and partially figurative works, the best of which have great presence.

His “Threshhold” series recalls, without imitating, Robert Motherwell’s great “Open” series of paintings of the 1960s.

Only “Night Painting Sideline” is a disappointment among Mitten’s works. Composed of the partial figure of a woman, from stretching toes to extended fingertips holding a paint brush, it is the least enigmatic and the least successful of his works on view.

David Beck Brown is represented by photographic documentation of completed works and maquettes of proposals that have not yet found supporters. Included are color photographs of “Rainbows of Spring,” an exercise for schoolchildren in finding a solution to the problem of making sculptures out of empty soda pop cans.

One of the most beautiful of Beck’s works is “Quarry Project--Place No. 2,” which demonstrates the recycling of a site to create a grotto of solitude.

The exhibit continues through Sunday.

The Michael Dunsford Gallery (828 G St.) has reopened in a new location not far from the old one--upstairs. It now occupies the building’s top two floors.

Although the gallery specializes in decorative arts and jewelry of 1900-1960, it has also had an intermittent series of always interesting and sometimes distinguished exhibitions of works by contemporary artists.

Inaugurating the new space are two bodies of works by multidisciplinary San Diego artist Barry Bell: a series of small Polaroid photographs of still lifes and a series of small acrylic paintings entitled “La Ciudad de Amor.”

The Polaroid still lifes (each about 3 inches square) are exquisite studies of a variety of objects, sometimes straightforward, as in “Fresh Protea” and “Bougainvillea,” but sometimes enigmatic.

The title “Still Life With Comet” piques the curiosity. The image brings a smile. It includes a full-blown rose in a silver bud vase, a ceramic fish, a glass cylinder filled with what looks like beet pasta (but is really pink chopsticks) and a container of cleanser. Our intelligence tells us that these objects do not belong together, but our eyes tell us that they form a harmonious composition.

The intimacy of the images demands close reading and rewards the viewer’s attention with the satisfactions of beauty and humor.

The seven paintings of “La Ciudad de Amor” are rectilinear abstractions in vivid and warm Latin colors that suggest the facades of buildings. Uniting them compositionally are bands of gridded gray across the bottoms and bands of earth brown.

The artist has written of the series: “La Ciudad de Amor is a mythical Latin American city which is concerned solely with the ‘business’ of love. Shopkeepers of the occult and esoteric purvey potions, devices and incantations. Many visit the city hoping to find or rejuvenate love. Some are merely seeking comfort, others are desperate. An atmosphere of hope and intrigue permeates the walls and passageways of La Ciudad de Amor; there is much to gain, but there is a price.”

He effectively conveys a sense of erotic decadence in purely visual terms.

The exhibit continues through May 23.

The Gallery Store (724 Broadway) has an unusual and historically important exhibit of vintage photographs by Japanese artists Ryukichi Shibuya and Shikanosuke Yagaki.

Entitled “Before the Fire: Japan in the Thirties,” the exhibit consists of original photographic prints that miraculously survived the fire bombings of Tokyo in 1945. It may be the first show of its kind in the United States, according to Tom Jacobson, the photography historian, collector and dealer who organized the exhibit.

Yagaki’s images evince a personal artistry that finds poetry in commonplace modernity as well as in Japanese tradition.

Compare, for example, the languorous image of a kimono-clad woman viewed through the translucent grid of rice paper doors to that of a quickly moving, derby-hatted businessman viewed through the vertical slats of a door.

Yagaki reveals with equal authority the exotic beauty of geishas and the prosaic beauty of electrical outlets.

The visually fractured image of a traditional building seen through the horizontal lines of bamboo blinds looks as contemporary as computer-made art, but beautiful.

Shibuya brought art of a high order to his commercial photographs featuring cosmetics, fox furs and even socks. Despite its exotic elements, the world he photographed all of 50 years ago is one we recognize as our own.

The exhibit continues through May 9.