LA Weekly

Given his fertile mind (not to mention sure hand), Gifford Myers doesn't show enough in Los Angeles. The works in his latest sculptural series — fabricated in good finish/fetish fashion from automotive paint on (or in) resin — are as simply drawn as they are provocatively conceived. Their M&M colors aside, many convey a sly erotic charge in their oblique imitations of intimate areas of the human body. Starting with navels from 2005 and working his way up — sorry, down — since, Myers has formulated several very sexy, funny objects. These are interspersed with some equally eccentric conjurations that riff on rather more innocent sources: hats, umbrellas, that kind of thing. Actually, no one Myers object can be identified with a single source — and that's part of his genial magic. Not all Myers hews is with a leer — but with a wink, yes. (Don't miss Tad Wiley's similarly elegant abstract paintings in the back.) Lora Schlesinger Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., No. T3, Santa Monica; Tues.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; thru Feb. 16. (310) 828-1133.

(Click to enlarge)

Gifford Myers, Object/Stormy Weather (2005)

Another veteran local magician, Tom Eatherton, also exhibits too rarely in his hometown. Eatherton's latest installation creates a shallow, recessed room of two scrims stretched at an obtuse angle, behind each of which a light flickers furiously between bright red and bright blue — blue behind one plane, red behind the other, and then reversed, at strobe-light speed. It hurts so good. More restful are the smaller light pieces in back, the most alluring (and latest) of which sets a pale white orb somewhere in the depths of a black hole. Cardwell Jimmerson, 8568 Washington Blvd., Culver City; Tues.-Sat. 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; thru Feb. 23. (310) 815-1100.