Santa Monica

Robert Tiemann, exhibiting for the first time in Los Angeles, is preoccupied with mathematical systems and counting. Happily, his humble, untitled sculptures and paintings reveal he is not blind to the Puritan sensuality of his industrial materials.

Stacks of round wafers of plywood and particle board are the coin of Tiemann’s realm. In one piece wafers stacked to different heights protrude from the wall in order of thickness. On the floor, a serious bolt fixes the center of another stack.

Repeated grids fashioned out of black paint and string on canvas demonstrate six permutations of a nine-square motif.

Other painted works lead the viewer’s eye through geometric scanning patterns according to the way Tiemann’s felt pen orders battalions of numbers.

After dripping white paint on one of his wafer sandwiches, he takes it apart with the investigative interest of a child dissecting an Oreo cookie. Each blank or paint-spattered wafer hangs on the wall in rows that clearly disregard the original stack.

This work is quietly compelling, with its strong, pure treatment of industrial materials and its reminder of the mind’s insistent need to make order of the world. (Angles Gallery, 2230 Main St., to March 26.)