Santa Monica

Fecund and dazzling as always, Frank Stella’s latest wall-mounted sculptures possess a new formal elegance.

The trumpeting colors familiar since his Indian Bird Series of the late ‘70s linger in some of these pieces, but they are now hitched to more suavely congenial forms. In “The Quadrant S11,” a right-angled, pale blue-drizzled frame fragment insouciantly props itself up on a clump of big color-edged aluminum waves and a gay conical swirl painted in bright stripes.

In another group of works Stella expands on his post-1982 tendency to leave areas of his work unpainted. In these pieces, sparing, muted or absent color plays a supporting role in favor of placement, shape and texture.

In “Merry Christmas,” a huge calm gray semicircle hangs like an earring next to a swath of pleated metal, a great irregular template shape and a tall pebble-surfaced element poking into the gallery skylight. Cone and comma forms and a Moderne thick-and-thin raised stripe pattern in silver on black (similar to painted patterns in work of several years ago) further inflect this gorgeous present.

Nearly as rich a treat, “The Crotch” offers discreet curls and ruffles, another giraffe neck and a repeat flourish of metal “drapery” pinched just so by the master’s hand. (James Corcoran Gallery, 1327 Fifth St., Santa Monica, to May 28)