Santa Monica

Three sculptors transform mundane objects and un-artsy materials into works that run from the social poignancy of Karl Matson to the poetics of Rod Baer.

Baer crafts a nearly life-size dock attached to a deck holding a wagon sheared in half. A life-size canoe, its oars seemingly buried in the gallery floor, is also sheared and holds a few mysterious books. Nearby sits a precariously tilting “house” built with construction-site wire mesh. Every object is deftly made from welded or modeled steel. Detail is intentionally attentuated and surfaces look as if they’ve been rusted by weather and time.

Baer’s work puts one in mind of Jennifer Bartlett’s, but her houses and glass boats are slicker, more minimal objects. Partly because of his materials, partly because of their humor and humanity, Baer’s pieces radiate whimsically mysterious story lines and invite us to fill in the endings.

Karl Matson makes “toys” that challenge our gender-typed values. There’s a stack of pancake-flat cutout steel guns piled into a little totem. There’s a poured lead New York Yankees baseball cap that makes you smile the way an ancient grammar school photo does--until you realize that the eerie mound of thick metal chips beside it is a heap of battered Army dog tags. “Toys of Passage,” a metal wagon painted bright yellow, is filled with shiny paper-thin steel folded by the artist to ape those “innocent” paper missiles boys learn to toss early on. Matson, an introspective, undogmatic man, says the works aren’t meant to browbeat, just get us thinking. They do.

Finally, Steve Dobbin takes the ubiquitous table shape, gives it long, ambling legs and translates the whole concept into airy metal meshing or stalwart lead. In one clean sweep the works trigger a string of architectonic associations from shelters to altars to childhood blocks to the upright grace of the human form. (Meyers/Bloom Gallery, 2112 Broadway, to Sept. 10.)