ART REVIEW : Contemplative Spectacle : Sculpture: Something big appears about to happen in the figures of Antony Gormley.

A strange yet powerful mix of spectacle and quiet contemplativeness governs British sculptor Antony Gormley’s mini retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego.

From the life-size lead figure 10 feet up, extended outward from the gallery wall as if readied to take a perfect dive, to the two-room-sized installation of 35,000 terra-cotta figurines in the museum’s lower galleries, Gormley has created the sense that something big is going to happen. And, yet, the work remains frozen in an ominous, everlasting stillness.

Gormley’s work is about the deep, emotional messages given out by the smallest gestures of the human body. And, because all of these works look poised in expectation of something about to happen, all of the works are also about potential --a future that inevitably will never be realized for finite, static forms.

One of a generation of British sculptors in their late 30s and early 40s that also includes Richard Long, Tony Cragg, Bill Woodrow and Anish Kapoor, Gormley uses the simplest of forms and materials to create the broadest of spiritual messages.

His vision of human potential may stem, in part, from the fact that, in his early 20s, before beginning his career as an artist, Gormley spent three years in India, where he studied vipassana, a type of meditation known for stressing the body as a channel for awareness. And, although his figures’ poses do not have the difficult twists that we tend to associate with yoga, they embody a symmetty and physical centeredness consistent with such meditative activity.

Two of the works here are life-sized lead figures, part of a series he has been making since the early 1980s. Formed by creating a plaster mold from his own body, which he then replicates in shaped-lead forms welded together at strategic junctures, the mummy-like finished figures are entirely anonymous, yet very personal. They show no the facial expressions or other specific physical imprints, but, despite their simple forms, they have character.

The images are charged with a dynamic energy contained in their rigid postures as if by force of will. Most striking is a figure titled “Keep,” which stands--or extends from--the gallery wall, arms extended, as if gravity had suddenly taken a 90-degree turn-of-course. A far less dramatic figure, “Contact,” stands with arms pressed against the body while its hollow, fingerless hands turn outward, ready to emit a jet stream and take off in flight.

The most dramatic, and probably the most simplistic, example of Gormley’s imagery is an enormous installation titled “Field.” It would probably be impossible to not be swept away by the sheer quantity of the 35,000 small clay quasi-human figures that make up this work. Made for the artist by the Texca family in the Parish of San Matias, Cholula, Mexico, they are basically just heads with two poked holes for eyes raised up above the glob-like bodies that support them. The throngs stand crowded together, cheek to jowl, literally covering the gallery floor.

Although they are all virtually identical, because the figures are hand-made by this family better-known for their brick-making, the sculptures each are surprisingly individual, each seeming to gain character from their variations in height or slight changes in posture. They look out toward us, and we, as viewers, become intruders in their world, standing separate on steps leading into the gallery, unable to enter because there is no open space. They seem to be craning to see what we look like, even as we are examining them .

“Field” is very memorable, as well as alluring, cute and sweet, and the Oz-like installation evokes all the sorts of sappy feelings for these “little folks.” But, through its extravagance, “Field” loses the seriousness and power of Gormley’s other works. Showiness and sentiment overcome substance.

Simultaneous with Gormley’s show, the museum has installed a group of drawings and paintings by Francoise Gilot, a French-born La Jolla-based painter who has, rightfully, long been better-known for her writings about her relationship with Picasso than for her own work.

This show does little to change the impression that Gilot is an artist who mostly borrows from others’ forms. Titled “Modern Dance as Muse: The Art of Francoise Gilot,” the works are mostly of dance and stage costume designs and seem very dated here. Made from the 1940s to the present, but mostly focusing on work from the 1950s, the poses of the figures are awkward--suffering greatly from their proximity to Gormley’s sculptural figures--and the use of color mundane.

The museum is also presenting a selection of newly acquired works from its permanent collection, and it is worth noting that a group of these was purchased through a curator’s grant awarded to associate curator Madeleine Grynsztejn by the Los Angeles-based Peter Norton Family Foundation. Grynsztejn recently left the museum to become an associate curator at the Chicago Art Institute.

These recent purchases include, among others, a powerful work about AIDS by Kiki Smith, a somewhat humorous but also succinctly telling work about being half Native American-half Mexican by James Luna and a satirical portrait of a Border Patrol agent by Victor Ochoa. These are not major works by these artists, but they are significant additions to the museum’s holdings, not only because they are powerful works, but also because of their poignant references to contemporary history.

* The exhibitions of work by Antony Gormley and Francoise Gilot and selections from the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, will continue through Dec. 9. The museum is at 700 Prospect St., La Jolla. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday; Wednesdays until 9 p.m. (619) 454-3541.