Long Beach

In some of his recent sculptures, Michael Davis seems to be struggling out of decorativeness and into a purer, less self-conscious engagement with industrial materials. One small untitled piece offers a brief essay on the theme of filling and wedging: a piece of steel wrapped into a cone shape and stuck into a hole-laced cone of cement pierces a small ledge gripped by a textured black wooden chunk.

Taking a bolder tack, Davis offers three wall pieces based on large rotary elements. One wheel shape balances a scuffed golden ball in its center (“Pulley”); another holds a network of rusted bits of welded metal mounted on a long fat screw shape (“Torch”); the third houses curving fan blades (“Sphere B”). This trio has the severely presentational look of work that’s trying awfully hard to make a statement. A level of nuance or greater boldness is missing here, but Davis’ attempt to grapple with bigger things is noteworthy.

An elegiac, twilight-of-the-Industrial-Revolution strain suffuses two stronger works. In “Chain,”a framed “painting” of black-painted pine with a slight reddish glow in one corner seems to be sinking into a ledge on which a pair of large rusty links rests. In “Gear,”a rusty rotary device is stalled in a ledge underneath another black rectangle with a rosy sunset blush.

Also on view are solar burn pieces by Jay McCafferty. The newest ones are more formally restrained than the familiar rip-happy works. “Affirmed” is a brown tissue of holes and tiny tears that suggests a delicate weaving; “Direct” contains strict little geometric shapes created with painstaking grids of pink-prick burn holes. (The Works Gallery, 2740 E. Broadway, to June 20.)