Art Review

Liquid Light: Caren Furbeyre’s five new sculptures at Mark Moore Gallery dissect the rainbow, dividing its bands into dots, dashes and splashes of complementary colors. While the four wall-works are moderately successful, the single floor-piece makes this a show that shouldn’t be missed. “Primary Star Shift 1 & 2” ranks among the most dazzlingly beautiful objects to be seen in a gallery this season.

The shimmering surfaces of Furbeyre’s three-dimensional diptych look as if they have captured hundreds of gallons of liquid light. To see this color-saturated work is to be drawn like a moth toward a brightly burning lantern.

As soon as you’re close enough to figure out how it was made--from such mundane materials as plexiglass, acetate and household hardware--you realize that words fall far short of describing its attractions. Plus, you’re so visually stimulated and physically engaged that you won’t care to analyze its captivating effects.

As you circle its two round, table-like forms (whose tops have diameters of nearly 3 feet), “Primary Star Shift 1 & 2” appears to be a low-tech light show. Running through the spectrum like a pair of runaway color wheels, it simultaneously undergoes shifts in density, volume and texture.

If it weren’t for such traditional sculptural concerns, you’d be tempted to call Furbeyre’s piece a painting. After all, it’s a diptych, its best effects occur on flat surfaces, color is its primary element and it affects perceptions of spatial depth in very painterly ways.

To complicate matters even more, Furbeyre’s uncategorizable object shares deep affinities with furniture. Decorative yet functional, and scaled to the human body, her work could be a prototype for a popular line of tables.

“Primary Star Shift 1 & 2” could also be the mutant offspring of a mirrored disco ball, a wishing well and a field of candy-colored flowers seen through a kaleidoscope. Like Linda Hudson’s intangible installations and Yayoi Kusama’s closed chambers with single peepholes, this slippery object generates experiences that are worth thinking about long after you’ve pulled yourself free of its irresistible pull.

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* Mark Moore Gallery, 2032-A Broadway, Santa Monica, (310) 453- 3031, through Feb. 14. Closed Sundays and Mondays.