Wilshire Center

Italian artist Ettore Spalletti has installed a spare assembly of sculptural forms in a rough-edged gallery that might have been designed to hold them. Actually conceived individually as autonomous pieces, Spalletti’s odd geometric and “natural” forms play around the columns and periphery of the cavernous space. The only adjustment to the gallery itself is that baby blue dry pigment has been rubbed into the gray concrete floor, softening the ambiance and tying together the scattered objects.

The environment consists of three free-standing, flat-bottomed cones constructed of wood and covered with tempera and stucco; a black marble cone that leans against a wall and holds water in a convex indentation; an arched, window-like “icon” of alabaster; three pale slabs of frescoed paper, and an irregular pool-like pane of glass that lies on the floor.

The effect is like a metaphysical landscape, refined to a state of near-emptiness but punctuated by the sharp black cone and shiny glass “water” that’s ringed by cobalt blue dry pigment. Pleasant as it is to contemplate this Minimalist’s encounter with his spirit, there’s nothing distinctive enough in this work to make it particularly memorable. (Burnett Miller Gallery, 964 N. La Brea Ave., to Jan. 8.)