Wilshire Center

A divine madness infuses the work of Mario Merz, the Italian artist who seeks a primal wholeness beneath the cold veneer of contemporary society with his impermanent materials, neon lettering, igloos and obsession with numerals. Merz’s installation, “Leyden Jar,” was created in 1978 for a deconsecrated church in Italy. It is a tall enclosure of wire screening smeared here and there with red and yellow-colored beeswax, and hung with neon numbers, a grape vine, a tree branch, a Leyden jar (a primitive condenser for static electricity) and a group of box-like structures.

The numbers form the beginning of the Fibonacci series, a mathematical progression in which two numbers added together “give birth” to a third number. Because this sequence can be found in natural growth patterns, Merz finds it a hopeful sign. When his piece is working properly (it was out of order last week), the Leyden jar appears to be powering the neon numerals. They shoot upward in an arc from the curved tree branch, continuing the rhythms of nature.

On the next wall, above the twisting grape vine, the order of nature is violated--the numbers jostle each other out of their proper sequence. By private, delicate and tortuous means, he forges a metaphor for a utopian society. (Fiorella Urbinati Gallery, 8818 Melrose Ave., to Jan. 30.)