Santa Monica

If there be great social and political import in David Anderson’s sculpture, it is largely frightened off by its coarse, Gargantuan structure. The L.A. artist brings a junk sculptor’s vision to the making of oversize grotesques on Oriental themes.

“Paris/Peking” is a green patinated copper pagoda rising on a schematized Chinese table until the whole rises some 9 feet. “Opium” is an equally overscaled model of a traditional Chinese vessel sprouting a bouquet of iron flowers and chains. It is bored through with holes pointlessly lit from behind.

Since the work is devoid of any known formal preoccupation, it can only be thematic. About the only theme one can reasonably draw from the evidence has to do with Oriental aesthetic refinement crushed by Occidental industrial brutality. If that’s the point, it’s well made. (Natoli-Ross Gallery, 2110 Broadway, to Nov. 12.)