Wilshire Center

Fans of California ceramics will remember Chris Unterseher when he made anti-art clay surfers and curio shelf vignettes of country music greats. A more serious Unterseher comes through current wall-mounted ceramic platforms of about a foot or so holding inch-high renditions of actual postwar Japanese architecture isolated in austere Lilliputian landscapes.

Expertly glazed and worked to mimic surfaces and atmospheres as disparate as glistening steel at dusk or powdery matte snow bathed in pink sunlight, pieces use changing architectural styles as a metaphor for Japan’s changing national Zeitgeist in the postwar years. In “Night Skyline, Yokosuka Airfield,” Unterseher works a surface as electric and moody as Beatrice Wood’s to describe an empty, deep blue landscape of only boulders and air-raid warning towers. In “Emperor Visits Post War Housing,” minuscule bowing figures greet the imperial entourage from a makeshift structure that looks about as comfortable as an airplane hanger. In “Sky House-K. Kikutake-1957,” Unterseher captures the architect’s futile effort to translate the airy tiered pagoda style to concrete. In “Iwata Girls School-A. Izoki-1963” and “New Sky Buildings-Y. Watanabe-1970,” glistening, ultra-modern boxes loom over rubble.

The work operates on many levels. It has the magic of toys and the careful craft of fine art. Beyond that, a folksy, home-grown realism carries us through a period in Japanese history when the country was forced into a regimented industrialization, exchanging military for economic prowess and--it would seem from some of these haunting little dioramas--losing a little elegance and delicacy in the process. On the other hand, Unterseher’s poetic vistas link the stark geometric shapes of classical and modern Metabolist Japanese architecture to international trends during the ‘20s, implying more than coincidental ties between Japanese forms and the best of modernism. (Ovsey Gallery, 126 N. La Brea Ave., to April 6.)