La Cienega Area

Art Deco-y swoops and curls suggesting gnarled trees or the waves of a Hokusai print stir up the surface of Bay Area sculptor Ann Honig Nadel’s wall-hung kimono-silhouette bronzes. Scatterings of curved openings and drifting green patinas neatly suit this allusive mating of Japanese themes.

Nadel’s tabletop bronzes are mostly convex, vaguely torso-like sheets with cutouts and surface texture: pleasant but unmemorable. Freestanding pieces seem destined for greater things, but blandness or obduracy stands in the way. “Omega,” a stack of bronze sheets with vaguely vegetative imprints, the top piece canted and cornered, has more personality than the others. Both “Change” and “Chance” consist of tall poles rooted in bases and supporting triple rows of textured bronze sheets, each pair opened--like books--at different angles. Monolithic and ceremonial, these pieces don’t have the presence their size would suggest. (Gallery 454 North, 454 N. Robertson Blvd., to Feb. 27.)