La Cienega Area

An unwavering fascination with rainbow light effects refracting from hard-edged, geometric forms has given Larry Bell’s sculpture and vapor drawings a certain predictability. Surprisingly his newest mixed-media works on canvas remain faithful to his love of light as surface yet are also punchy explorations of form and space. They put some much needed zip back into Bell’s Minimalist aesthetic, even while they appear to be trying to find a comfortable formula.

Using ultra thin sheets of metal foil adhered by vacuum and heat to primed canvas, Bell makes compositions of shimmering opalescent color that dematerializes into white canvas or solid pastels. The foil bonds perfectly with the canvas yet impossibly appears deeply rumpled, stretched or rippled. It’s a stunning trompe l’oeil effect.

Unlike his repetitive vapor drawings, each image is unique. “Oriental Gardens,” one of the most successful, is a huge, dynamic arrangement of jagged foil fragments and rice papers stuck like wet, wind-blown paper to the infinite darkness of a matte black canvas. In this work and “Black Sargent” Bell begins to allow passages of flat color or iridescence to open like mystic portals. Holes emitting light in the middle of chaos are beguiling enough that we want to forgive the way they quickly settle into a pat format.

More problematic, yet perhaps ultimately more satisfying, are the Expressionistic flourishes that whip around paintings like the effervescent “Ken and Haps.” These sweeps of the painter’s brush struggle with self control, occasionally overwhelming the industrial detachment of the heat-tempered metal ground. Still, their humanity is welcome. (Kiyo Higashi Gallery, 8332 Melrose Ave., to Sept. 23.)