Sculpture Makes a Splash at Brea Mall : Art: City’s 90th Art in Public Places program piece is a stainless steel fountain created by Belgian artist Pol Bury.

The first sculpture by an internationally known artist commissioned for Brea’s Art in Public Places program was installed in Brea Mall’s Central Court on Wednesday. The untitled fountain sculpture by Belgian artist Pol Bury is the 90th work of art in the 15-year-old program.

The fountain, which is expected to be fully operational by the weekend, consists of 15 stainless steel spheres mounted on columns. The action of the water circulating through the columns makes the spheres rotate, an activity given added luster by the small, mirrorlike concave area in each sphere.

Early in his career, Bury, 67, was an abstract painter. In 1953 he made his first movable compositions--flat black and white planes that could be fitted together different ways to produce different patterns. A few years later he added electric motors, which he called “form mixers,” to his pieces.

The movement in these sprightly and sensual works tends to be almost imperceptible. Bury once described one of his pieces as “two slownesses gently grazing each other.”

His work was included in the 1964 Venice Biennale and has been the subject of numerous museum exhibitions in the United States and Europe. But in recent decades the sculptor--who lives in Paris and is married to an American--has been eclipsed by artists working in more contemporary modes.

A compact man with the drooping eyes of a basset hound, Bury was busy supervising a work crew on Wednesday. Asked if he found the mall an odd place for his art, he said he had made another shopping mall piece a decade ago in Short Hills, N.J.

“There are not so many differences between this and the public art of the street,” he said. He prefers putting the work in public sites rather than museums. Why? “More people.”

Brea’s public art program requires developers of all residential, commercial and industrial projects above the $500,000 level to fund a permanent work of art for the project site. Proposals are reviewed by city departments and an art advisory committee.

The decision to commission Bury was made by the New York corporate office of Corporate Property Investors (CPI), owners of the mall. Ken Glowacki, CPI’s director of development, said the piece cost “more than $100,000.”

Early next month, also as part of the Art in Public Places program, CPI will install a fiberglass sculpture by Parisian artist Niki de St. Phalle in the mall corridor between Robinson’s and Nordstrom.