La Cienega

German abstract artist Gerwald Rockenschaub shows series of plexiglass rectangles, some in high-tech colors, others transparent. The pieces’ autocratic simplicity insists that we notice taken-for-granted spatial relationships inside the works and in the show space. Pieces reflect viewers and gallery architecture in an infinite series of visual echoes. The industrial finishes are first annoyingly slick: Their designer appeal indicates the speed with which “high” art becomes consumer fodder (and vice versa). Second, they are annoyingly mute, forcing lazy, late-’80s culture vultures to participate by figuring them out. Against the old school of metaphysical geometry, this intellectual, deadpan abstraction seemed innovative when it hit the streets. Beyond a booky interest in the tons of writing on this “new” geometry, the physical experience of Rockenschaub’s slick surfaces is spiritless. (Michael Kohn Gallery, 313 N. Robertson Blvd., to Oct. 14.)