La Cienega Area

The interplay of order and chance are at work in painted steel, wall-mounted sculptures by William Dwyer. Using different gauges of wire, from thick and stalwart in “Compression Square” to thin and spidery in “One x One Factor,” Dwyer makes three-dimensional grids often broken up by several inch lengths of brightly painted wire.

As the viewer looks through the grids, patterns of line and color emerge, sometimes producing a taut de Stijl arrangement, sometimes looking like the layout of a micro chip.

“Compression Square” looks too much like those awful wrought iron window guards necessitated by urban living, and other works are overly tame. “Zenith” effectively manipulates interactions between the viewing space, viewers’ perceptions of color and depth and that old standby: pleasant design. (Kiyo Higashi, 8332 Melrose Ave., to Feb. 16.)