Symbols Fragment Into Mere Gesture

Of the five new works by Jim Hodges on view at Marc Foxx Gallery, one is a minor spectacle. The others are just plain minor.

Over the last seven or eight years, the New York-based Hodges has become a stalwart among contemporary artists dealing with memory, beauty and longing. His sculptures tend to tweak a nostalgic nerve and flaunt a sentimentality that is refreshingly unself-conscious.

What triggers the emotions in Hodges’ work is the simplicity and familiarity of his materials, which play off the associative power of the ordinary. A plain, white dress shirt, for instance, was buttoned around smaller and smaller shirts in a recent work that emblematized with great poignancy the way time passes and yet is retained in the present.

Such poignancy eludes the work in this selection. Here we have a single white shirt in a child’s size, stuffed slightly with dark cloth and laid out on a table. “Not a story but a glance,” it’s titled, as if to excuse its superficiality.

Facile gestures are the norm here: A rectangular mirror rotates slowly on one wall, a quilt of metallic paint chips hangs on another.

“Great Event” is the show’s only redeeming feature. A canvas circle 6 feet in diameter and covered in a mosaic of mirrored tiles that crisscross, spiral, loop and line up, the piece shimmers with energy. (It brings to mind those mirrored balls that hang over dance floors and can turn a mundane hall into an enchanted space.) This mirror fractures whatever faces it, turning a cohesive image into a glorious, dissonant confetti of reflections. All of Hodges’ work here short-circuits expectations, but only “Great Event” makes it a gratifying experience.

BE THERE

Marc Foxx Gallery, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., (323) 857-5571, through June 19. Closed Sundays and Mondays.