Santa Monica

Anyone who has seen those 1968 photos of sculptor Beverly Pepper clad in calf-length boots standing next to her enormous polished aluminum cubes has wondered how this statuesque woman could craft those Gargantuan, imposing forms. Well, 20 years and a major Brooklyn Museum retrospective later, Pepper is still peeling off expectations as fast as we form them. Without missing a beat, Pepper has switched from the airy Bauhaus precision of her aluminum work to “urban altars” and “columns”--stalwart, dense forms made from rough hewn, dark cast iron with crusty surface textures that take our minds forward to factory debris and backward to fertility totems or votive grave markers.

The columns predominate in this show. Set on clunky little mounds or small stepped stages, the long lean shafts slice the air, looking like second cousins to those spare, mythical sculptures Noguchi made to accompany Martha Graham’s dances. Structurally the works are based on complex variations of elongated hexagonal or octagonal tubes, which tends to give works the look of giant tools for tightening bolts. In some pieces, Pepper divides the multi-sided shafts into two abutting mirror halves with the thinnest strip of air running up their center so that they look like giant, perfectly perched tuning forks. Names such as “Vertical Presence I” or “Ritual Sentinel” confirm some personal mythology operating here, and completion dates from 1981 to 1989 indicate that every subtle counterpoint of weight, balance, internal vs external pressure we experience but cannot articulate has been rigorously planned. Whether this work is your cup of tea or not, Pepper is a major sculptor who merits attention. (James Corcoran Gallery, 1327 5th St., to May 20.)