SANTA MONICA

Pence Gallery serves up--a particularly appropriate word here--a dozen or so graphic works from the early ‘70s by longtime West Coast artist Wayne Thiebaud. The subjects are the artist’s usual fare: colorful suckers, chocolate cakes, candy counters and gum balls. Though Thiebaud has always balked at the Pop label, the comparison with Oldenburg’s store objects and the ‘60s sensibility is tempting. Yet in works like “Glasses” and “Triangle Thins” (where hors d’oeuvres cast shadows that look suspiciously like opulent breasts) we see that Thiebaud is not interested in the emblematic or media stance of Pop and may well be, as he’s repeatedly told us, a realist with an ample sense of humor.

A concurrent first one-person show for Shauna Peck is impressive. Peck forms craggy looking shapes of bronze, cast concrete, cement and slate. Long bowed shapes arch across the gallery walls, a minimal-looking slab leans into a wall, a hollow mellon-sized pod erupts at its center as if it delivered up some strange life form.

Described as artifactual, the works really allude not to the past but to the future. Peck’s sculptures look like abstract art objects, the detritus of high technology and remnants of nature, all unearthed after some futuristic holocaust. In spite of these allusions that give the work fullness and depth, this is by no means apocalyptic art. Carefully edited and well-staged, glistening with lean artsy elegance, the work keynotes the interaction of object, viewer and viewing space, the inherently ritualistic value of shapes and the relationship between contrived and natural forms. (Pence Gallery, 908 Colorado Ave., to Aug. 22.)