Works That Move Through Space in Three Dimensions

Liz Larner’s first L.A. solo show in seven years features a single sculpture that ranks among the most resolved and sophisticated she has made. Titled “2 as 3 and Some too,” this three-dimensional drawing of a pair of interlocked cubes plays fast and loose with the old-fashioned idea that sculpture occupies space while painting creates the illusion of space.

Standing in the center of the sky-lit gallery at Regen Projects, Larner’s unevenly stacked forms recall the silhouettes of cubes people often doodle. To such simple spatial illusions, the 37-year-old sculptor has added bodily scale, artificial color and a wobbly sense of instability, transforming the depiction of space into a charged experience of its slippery ungraspability.

Each skeletal cube is made up of 12 approximately 5-foot-long sections that are about as thick as a human femur. Made of meandering, irregularly curved steel supports, which have been completely covered with a type of smooth papier-ma^che, these components have the texture of sun-baked bones.

But Larner confounds this archeological impression by painting her work in three soft shades: tan, turquoise and greenish-yellow. Consequently, the lines that define its contours slither through space like goofy cartoon snakes. It is as if a perfect cube’s idealized geometry has gone on vacation, leaving an extremely relaxed yet playfully animated surrogate in its place.

As is indicated by Larner’s cleverly circular title, when the corners of two cubes overlap, they form a third space without adding any volume to the whole. Greater than the sum of its parts, “2 as 3 and Some too” puts corporeal experience before disembodied logic.

A second sculpture, casually stuck in the gallery’s far corner, is equally efficient and elusive. Resembling a couple of monochrome canvases that have been unraveled and rewoven to form loopy, interlinked webs, this compact wad of chaos also flaunts its formal rigor by confusing the boundaries between painting, sculpture and drawing.

Neither of Larner’s sculptures occupies space in a static manner. Instead, they both deftly move through it, drawing viewers on enlivening rides that are physically and conceptually satisfying.

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* Regen Projects, 629 N. Almont Drive, (310) 276-5424, through Aug. 1. Closed Sundays and Mondays.