Santa Monica

Like metaphysical magnets, the large ring-shaped bronze sculptures Michael Todd has been turning out in recent years snag a passing flurry of tubes, bars, crosses, grids and molten blots. The circular forms, like those in Japanese Zen painting, are clearly intended as symbols of the cosmos and the repetitive smaller elements may well have specific meanings to the artist.

But even so, there is something predictable and a wee bit boring about these pieces. Like lesser works by Erick Hawkins--the modern dance choreographer whose work is deliberately tensionless--Todd’s approach has a way of bogging down in passivity or decorativeness.

Some of the new pieces trade in the circle for a frame-like rectangular format. This may not be the answer to enlivening a style, but in “Lake Piru I,” Todd seems to be experimenting with a new kind of form: a curious little flat piece with eyes that suggests a primitive fetish figure.

A group of ceramic plates, some with broken rims, are ornamented with wide-brushed circles and blobs and ropy lines. But like most of the other recent work, they also seem overly deliberate, lacking the idiosyncratic, unruly energy Todd conjured up a decade ago. (Tortue Gallery, 2917 Santa Monica Blvd., to Oct. 8.)