Santa Monica

Still in his 20s, New Yorker Gary Simmons is certainly an artist to watch. His series of conceptually based three-dimensional pieces with schoolroom themes are acute visual metaphors that circle around education and political freedom. Rows of pint-sized rostrums each outfitted with a microphone tilted at the same angle (“Private Schoolroom”) suggest thoughts about the ubiquity of mass communications, the fragility of First Amendment rights and the power of children--as vocal consumers today, full-fledged voters tomorrow. An elementary school coat rack holding neatly aligned midget-sized Ku Klux Klan hoods and robes (“Six X”) gives one pause: Imagine, a new generation of tidy little bigots, already inculcated with perverse beliefs.

“Disinformation Paragraph,” a wall piece, consists of different-sized framed lengths of blank chalkboard arranged like words in a paragraph. Any message one might write with the pieces of black chalk is only temporary, subject to swift eradication or alteration--as is disinformation, the false information leaked by a government as part of its intelligence operations. (Roy Boyd Gallery, 1547 10th St., to Jan. 6.)