Santa Monica

What is it about Margi Weir’s cows that separates them so decisively from other sculptural fauna, like Deborah Butterfield’s horses? Too sparely fashioned to be genuinely kitschy, Weir’s reclining and grazing herd--made of metal tubing punctuated with gesturally painted multicolored panels in a variety of shapes--nonetheless seems superficial and obvious. The pieces are self-consciously “artful” without yielding either a sense of formal discovery or an insight into the nature of the beast.

Curiously, there is little humor here. Even in “Blue Trophy Head,” a multicolored wall piece with a theme that begs to be treated as an outlandish joke, one is hard-pressed to read signs of parody. Instead, as her statement reveals, Weir is a devotee of ponderous, secondhand symbolism.

A “Mother” cow is painted white because of “the pure and noble tradition of motherhood” and because this unfortunate animal for some reason personifies Winter and the Ice Age. The orange-toned calf is supposed to suggest “primeval mud.” Lifting angled metal feet in vaguely menacing byplay, two cows (“Challenge” and “Ultimatum”) create a simplistically programmatic piece called “Conflict.”

The best of the lot is “Bucking Brahmin,” a wall sculpture in which the play of line, solid and void creates a sprightly gust of energy that’s just this side of cute. (Ruth Bachofner Gallery, 926 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, to Sept. 8.)