LA CIENEGA AREA

Working with a combination of welded scrap steel, automobile parts and industrial detritus, Santa Barbara sculptor Noel Canfield creates figurative assemblages that attempt to fuse the graceful balance of classical sculpture with a rough-hewn junk-funk aesthetic. He forms human contours, sinews and muscles from an amorphous combination of bolts, springs, wires, piping and bicycle chains, creating a hybrid synthesis that draws as much upon Rodin’s concern for anatomical plasticity as it does Picasso’s surreal bricolages of found objects.

When Canfield sticks to formal and representational concerns, his work exhibits a toughness and ambiguous resonance beyond the simple sum of its (once) mechanical parts. A melancholy seated figure contemplating a dead bird, for example, manages to be poignant without sinking into sentimentality; stiff-limbed automatons such as “Yoni” or “The Worker” could be read as either self-fulfilling prophesies of Machine Age optimism gone sour or ironic paeans to the recycling process itself.

Unfortunately, Canfield also burdens much of the work with simplistic political preaching. Mutating faces are juxtaposed with warheads and mushroom clouds, while an archetypal Brancusi column is metamorphosed into a totem of cast-aluminum bombs. If Canfield can curb such sophomoric holocaust symbolism and focus more on the literal nuts and bolts of the genre, he may prove to be an interesting addition to an already rich tradition. (Richard/Bennett Gallery, 332 1/2 N. La Brea Ave., to Oct. 31.)