Wilshire Boulevard

The bare rump of a life-size male nude greets visitors at an exhibition of British sculptor Antony Gormley’s work. On his knees, chin to the ground, this lead-sheathed figure appears to be blowing into (or sucking from) a long pipe that runs across the gallery floor. If this piece were the whole show, it would be a provocative introduction to a body of work concerned with how it feels to be human and with relationships between an insular existence and spiritual freedom.

But “Home and the World” does not squat alone. In the same large room is a flying figure, called “Keep,” that hovers just below the ceiling. Back galleries contain an assembly of 11 lead bowls, a crouching figure, a lead cube attached to a fiberglass vase and a large wall piece with the silhouette of a curled-up figure cut away from a grid composed of slices of bread.

A strange assortment, but it has a certain logic pertaining to concepts of containment and confinement--and the difference between the two. The eerie presence of the art is mollified by hand-worked materials and a palpable essence of life. Gormley’s generic figures, cast from his own body but reproducing no details, are somewhere between Trova’s futuristic men and George Segal’s socially conscious folks. Along with other young artists such as Los Angeles’ Peter Shelton, Gormley has found a way to make us see the figure anew. (Burnett Miller Gallery, 964 N. La Brea Ave., to May 14.)