HOLLYWOOD

Using a combination of wood, sand, wire and pigment, Eileen Senner creates enigmatic, roughly hewn sculptures that suggest fossilized relics rescued from an archaeological dig. With their long, sinewy, spiraling forms and bulbous biomorphic contours, the wall and free-standing pieces trigger a variety of allusions, ranging from fragmented body parts and primitive tools to whale bones and enlarged ocean plankton. Alternatively, the work could also be read as pure abstraction, exploiting traditional form/space, object/metaphor relationships as an organic extension of Minimalism’s reductive vocabulary.

The work’s strength and weakness is its dependence upon a collective impact. Taken individually, most of these pieces lack convincing resonance beyond a quirky sense of formal ambiguity and a delicate attention to surface patina. As a group, however, they transform an ephemeral environment of aesthetic commerce (the gallery) into a sense of permanent museum, where art work becomes artifact, personal signature a universal archetype. That’s no small feat. (Newspace, 5241 Melrose Ave., to June 27.)