Set Pieces: Props are most interesting when...

Set Pieces: Props are most interesting when they get you to forget that they’re theatrical devices at all, causing you to fall for the illusions they’ve been designed to sustain. Although Mineo Mizuno’s large ceramic sculptures at Chac-Mool Gallery are intended to form a shrine to contemplative serenity, the installation is too cluttered and repetitious to let you forget you’re standing in retail space.

Even if these impressively scaled and handsomely glazed works were given more space, it’s difficult to imagine that they’d generate much more than the idea of reflective tranquillity. Too slick to slow viewers down to a meditative pace, they have a glibly decorative presence. Imagine a Baroque version of Minimalism, and you’ll get an idea of the contradictory impulses tugging at Mizuno’s unresolved sculptures.

Aside from five stylized peaches that are rather sexy, and a pair of stairways that look like big bookends, all of the artist’s works take their shape from the silhouette of a Greek urn. Sometimes Mizuno renders a fairly flat version of the entire urn, and hangs it on the wall, sets it on a pedestal or lays it on the floor. At other times, he shapes only the urn’s handles (or arms), and leans them against the wall or places them in pairs on the floor.

Although many of the elements of a traditional Japanese shrine are dutifully evoked, the installation fails to add up to a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Instead, Mizuno’s sculptures have the presence of a set design for a drama that has not yet begun--or has already ended.

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* Chac-Mool Gallery, 8920 Melrose Ave., (310) 550-6792, through Jan. 20. Closed Sundays and Mondays.