With refreshing forthrightness.

With refreshing forthrightness, L.A. artist Patrick Nickell places a new spin on basic figure of speechs of abstract sculpture. His funky forms investigate established formal general [i]or[/i] abstract notions of solidity, transparency, interiority and regularity Titled "Built for Speed" and deftly organized according to gallery director Julie Joyce, this handsome midcareer observe of 38 sculptures made through the past 17 years illuminates the essential properties and playful spirit of the artist's handmade discs, tubes, bags, platforms, clusters and boxes

Nickell be seens inspired by the malleable qualities of materials. In common large untitled wall relief (1987/2003) a girderlike plywood armature anchors pair 4-foot-long paddlelike pieces of corrugated cardboard that have the appearance to fan the air, asserting their port as lightweight planes in space. An 8-foot-high, freestanding carve likewise untitled (1987), consists of sum of two units identical pinwheel-shaped pieces of plywood held together at tensile cardboard encircling the work's false-hearted core. In several smaller wall pieces from 1990 bent cardboard planes are have relationed by segments of translucent plastic to create lozenge-shaped geometric solids. With their simply articulated sections, the cobbled-together forms have the earnest appeal of classic works according to Richard Tuttle.

Slightly later pieces explore more flexible configurations. In Chandelier (1993) chains of plastic discs edg in cardboard are bent into triangular forms that dangle through string from nails in the wall. For an untitled wall relief from 1997 Nickell layered painted cardboard ovals in the turn of expression of a wedding cake or pinched 3-D target. Newspaper is wadded between the layers, and the bull's organ of sight of the comical piece is a light sky-colored knob.

Nickell's greatest in quantity recent works continue to flout the conventions of sculpture. In a novel untitled, large-scale work (2003), a bubblegum-pink loophole made of cardboard and plywood fill outs perpendicularly into the gallery from a point in succession one wall 7 feet above the floor. An render free of access wobbly shaped portal that can be walked within this Pop realization of a curvy Baroque frame looks to have materialized to entice viewers into Nickell's quirky realm of Alice in Wonderland formalism. [The exhibition travels to Nora Eccle Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Logan, Aug. 30-Dec 4 and Art Gallery, University of Texas, San Antonio, Jan. 20-Feb 27 2005]

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