La Cienega Area

Kenji Fujita shows wall-hung sculptures made from industrial bric-a-brac: white hexagonal cups that look like industrial molds, raw wood arcs accented with acid yellows and greens, the kidney-bean-shaped clear plastic trays you see in doctors’ offices and black rubber tubing. He used to coil and compact these into compartments and helixes vaguely recalling cells. Current, very handsome works move more freely in vertical and horizontal directions, cascading or tiering with an almost Baroque complexity.

“Lazarus” builds a vertical sweep of raw wood rings perched precariously on each other. At the top of this, a mass of six-sided containers placed edge on edge suggest life forms opening and closing.

From a distance, the works are visually engaging enough to be labeled “Baroque decoration” or they seem ordered and structured enough to be interpreted as quasi-scientific models. Up close you see the black wire holding components together, the metal studs and saw marks. At this range, Fujita seems more interested in leading us through a hands-on process, mapping out the trial-and-error decisions that underlie the procedures of wresting order from disorder, beauty from industrial waste.

Since he’s interested in process, he never lets any one of these states gain too much ground, and the works appear to be in continual evolution. His sophisticated use of mundane materials in formal abstractions (shape is expressed through flat wood forms, volume through the open areas inscribed by containers, line through black tubing) marks Fujita as a first-rate conceptualist. (Daniel Weinberg Gallery, 619 Almont Drive, to March 25.)