WILSHIRE CENTER

During his early years, Armand Fernandez shed his last name (in deference to Van Gogh who signed his work “Vincent”) and the final letter of his first name (in emulation of a printer’s error). Stripped down to Arman, he soon began accumulating objects--from violins to gas masks--and turning masses of them into artworks. “Long Term Parking,” his most imposing feat, is a tower of 60 cars on the outskirts of Paris.

Arman himself can be accused of parking too long in the same spot, but his 40-year career encompasses considerable variety. Rows of squeezed paint tubes, encased in polyester cubes, focus on the rhythms of repetition. Welded masses of musical instruments or ordinary tools either emphasize their inherent character or transform them into foreign entities. Sliced up and reassembled, other objects reveal their inner structure as they investigate the fractured forms of Cubism and Futurism. In short, Arman has taken the modernist notion of using ready-made objects as raw materials and imbued it with scale and elegance.

In his first one-man show in Los Angeles in 25 years, the French artist exhibits recent “slicings” of bronze gods and goddesses. For each, he has made his own mold of an antique statue, cast it in bronze, then sliced the figure and welded the pieces into an open, airy form that reorganizes anatomy while accentuating movement. A head of Zeus cascades like a rock fall, Venus has wings that open like doors, while Diana appears to have multiplied into a committee. Along with these large figures, Arman has cut the same 1-foot-tall Zeus nine ways, as if to demonstrate that his saw has the range of a pencil.

A sense of deja vu occasionally infiltrates the show, as when “Zeus, God of Futurism” recalls Boccioni’s “Unique Line of Continuity in Space,” but Arman also offers revelations about the fluctuating nature of three-dimensional observation. In the back gallery, a sampling of earlier works sets the sliced deities in context. (Wenger Gallery, 828 N. La Brea Ave., to June 10.)