Santa Monica

Mysteriously Becalmed: Two out of three recent works by California-born Gerald Kamitaki--who seems to be showing mostly in Japan these days--are becalmed in the waters of Zen-like mystery. “Untitled Enclosure” consists of long canvas-covered lengths of wood forming a huge, concentric, roughly diamond shape on the wall. They are all painted black, with a few stray blank areas, and are studded with nails that poke out of oversized holes in the canvas. Varying degrees of care are given to the cleanness of the transition between abutting lengths of wood. What this is all meant to signify is anyone’s guess.

“Skyscraper” consists of a grid of 25 double-paned white lacquer frames holding faintly shiny pieces of blue cloth. Each “pane” is pierced by Kamitaki’s pet motif of nails protruding from oversized holes. But here this gesture suggests a kind of frightfully dogged yet random violence, a will toward completeness that is as cleanly planned and blandly executed as the perfect architecture of the frames themselves. (Hoffman Gallery, 912 Colorado Ave., to March 31.)