West Los Angeles

The sound of a thundering, dry crack--soul satisfying yet poignant--fills Shigeo Miura’s sculpture. Miura makes elongated pillars by splitting castoff timber from refurbished Los Angeles buildings. They are as much about the process of woodworking as they are an affirmation of the continuity of life.

Fibrous networks of channels and knots are inside the halved beams. Miura covers these surfaces with a fragile skins of brown rice paper, carbon black or gold leaf revealing textures and symbolically binding the tree’s wounds with dressings as fragile as cobwebs. Shaped timbers become glittering icons or mummified totems. Cut and stacked into twisting pillars or arches the forms relate a fascinating history of displacement and realignment with nature.

The gleaming minimalist abstract paintings of Maura Robinson glow softly in the next gallery. Their nesting rectangle format strongly suggests the pristine alchemy of Eric Orr’s early work. However Robinson’s burnished surface of intense color and precious metals have a distinctly Renaissance aura. The process is stunning but the images are static, their abstract spirituality tired. (Art Space, 10550 Santa Monica Blvd., to June 3).