Santa Monica

John McCracken has made shiny one-color cubes, slabs and plinths since the ‘60s. Exhibiting somewhat fitfully and inclined to wander off the mark, the artist has remained vaguely undefined despite museum exhibitions and a solid reputation among his peers.

His latest batch of work feels like those ads that recommend beef when you want the real thing. McCracken has buckled down to visual matters that were in the air 25 years ago, matters that are still at the heart of the sculptural experience.

A group of 8-foot rectangular monoliths lay out the territory. A blue-black behemoth called “Copernicus” is shaped like a wedge-form high-rise. Its widest side seems to stand unsupported, its color making it appear transparent like a dark pool whose bottom is invisible.

You can tell that the artist knows what he is doing by the aptness of his titles. The deep red “Centaurus” is aggressively carnal; “Glacier,” remote and icy. A Baroque black work is cut in lapidary facets that play games of illusion. McCracken has taken up questions of appearing and disappearing that were once actively engaged by Larry Bell and always implicit in his own work. A group of leaning slabs go back to contemplations on the weightlessness of pure color once entertained in the sculpture of Peter Alexander.

In an art world riddled with aesthetic corruption, it is intensely reassuring to find there are still artists hanging in there in pursuit of the genuine article. (HoffmanBorman Gallery, 912 Colorado Ave., to Nov. 12.)