Santa Monica

Diane Buckler sandblasts chunks of granite with the pale imprints of photographs, marrying the fugitive, will-o’-the-wisp work of light and emulsion to the solid, polished permanence of a building material. Once notebook-sized, these quietly allusive pieces are now monumental. Their subject matter ranges from a feminist perspective on the idealized women of historical art to hermetic meditations on architecture and culture.

In “Aspiration, Divergence and Repose,” the images of two baroque sculptures--one looking heavenward, the other pretzeled into a twist of legs and arms, float over the simple, lovely image of the back of a flesh-and-blood reclining nude woman. Clinging to the top of the tall slab of “Commedia’s Disillusionment” is the ghostly trace of a chandelier--a double-exposure filigree of the crystals suggesting rapid movement. The image of a large checkered mask tilts near the bottom of the slab, as if tossed away in pique at the height of revelry.

In these works, Buckler has left behind the intimate, whispering lucidity of her small pieces, with their less hieratic, more seemingly casual placement of images. But the newly grand scale offers architectural possibilities. The unlikely combination of media and enigmatic images of single objects divorced of context could be the stuff of haunting public art. (Krygier/Landau Gallery, 2114 Broadway, to Nov. 11)