La Cienega Area

Hubert Kiekol is a German abstractionist who, like his compatriots, uses deceivingly minimal work to raise complex questions. Sculpture on view is built from tall simple shafts of concrete. Two rise vertically. One spouts stairlike edges the other is notched with rectangular indentations.

Since the ‘80s, Kiekol has done more strictly architectural work--huge columns that supported nothing and in their functional redundancy tested the thinning membrane between sculpture and building. These works seem more potent. They reach forward and backward in time, recalling medieval fortresses, some of Frank Lloyd Wright’s innovative pyramidal designs, or suggesting futuristic sculptural dwellings. The precision and measure that these structures (and a handful of similar drawings) insist on emphasizes the lamentable state of architecture today. (Asher Faure, 612 Almont Drive, to May 27.)